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The Red Widow; or, The Death-Dealers of London

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Title: The Red Widow; or, The Death-Dealers of London

Creator: William Le Queux


        
Release date: July 9, 2014 [eBook #46236]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46236

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED WIDOW; OR, THE DEATH-DEALERS OF LONDON ***




Produced by Al Haines.





                            *THE RED WIDOW*

                                   OR

                      THE DEATH-DEALERS OF LONDON


                                   BY

                           *WILLIAM LE QUEUX*



                        CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
                London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
                                  1920




                               *CONTENTS*


CHAPTER

   1. Concerns a Man in White
   2. Who is Mrs. Braybourne?
   3. The "Game"--and its Players
   4. Progress of the Plot
   5. Contains a Note of Alarm
   6. The Locked Room In Hammersmith
   7. What Happened in Bridge Place
   8. On Loch Lomond
   9. A Gentleman named Greig
  10. More Mysterious Circumstances
  11. Spreading the Net
  12. The Person from Upstairs
  13. Relates a Strange Conversation
  14. On Saturday Night
  15. Carries the Mystery Farther
  16. Baiting the Trap
  17. "News" from Lancaster Gate
  18. The Coup and its Consequence
  19. What Happened to Gerald
  20. The Room of Evil
  21. Lost Days
  22. From out the Past
  23. The Cry in the Night
  24. Hard Pressed
  25. The Recluse
  26. "Get Rid of the Girl!"
  27. "The Day After To-Morrow"
  28. At the Window
  29. On Thin Ice
  30. Through the Darkness

Conclusion




                            *THE RED WIDOW*



                              *CHAPTER I*

                       *CONCERNS A MAN IN WHITE*


"I can't understand what it all means.  The whole thing is a mystery--_a
great mystery_!  I have my suspicions--grave suspicions!" declared the
pretty blue-eyed girl emphatically.

"Of what?" asked the young man strolling at her side along the sunny
towing-path beside the Thames between Kew and Richmond.

"Well--I hardly know," was her hesitating response.  "But I don't like
auntie to remain in that house any longer, Gerald.  Some evil lurks
there; I'm sure of it!"

Her companion smiled.

"Are you quite sure you are not mistaken, Marigold?" he asked in a
dubious tone.  "Are you absolutely certain that you really saw Mr. Boyne
on Thursday night?"

"Why, haven't I already told you exactly what I saw?" asserted the girl
excitedly.  "I've related in detail all I know.  And I repeat that I
don't like auntie being there any longer."

"Well," said the young man, as they strolled leisurely along near the
water's edge on that Sunday afternoon in summer, their intention being
to take tea at Richmond, "if what you have described is an actual fact,
then I certainly do think we ought to watch the man very closely."

"You don't doubt me--do you?" exclaimed the girl, with quick resentment.

"Not in the least, Marigold," he replied, halting and looking straight
into her clear, almost child-like eyes.  "Please do not misunderstand
me.  But what you have said is so extraordinary that--well, it seems all
so weird and amazing!"

"That's just it.  The affair is extraordinary, and, as I've said, I hope
auntie will leave the place.  She has a very good post as housekeeper to
Mr. Boyne. Her affliction is against her, I know, but there is something
in progress at Bridge Place that is too mysterious for my liking."

"Then let us watch and try to discover what it really is," said Gerald
Durrant determinedly.

"Will you really help me?" she asked eagerly.

"Of course.  Rely upon me.  If I can be of any assistance to you where
your aunt is concerned, Marigold, I shall only be too delighted.  Surely
you know that!" he added, looking again into her eyes with an expression
of unspoken admiration and affection.

She murmured her thanks, and the pair--a handsome pair, indeed, they
were--went on along the gravelled path in a silence that remained
unbroken for some minutes.

Marigold Ramsay was just twenty-one, and an uncommonly pretty girl,
though unconsciously so. Men turned to glance a second time at her as
she passed.  Though a typical London business girl who carried her
leather dispatch-case on weekdays, she bore an air of distinction which
was unusual in one of her class.  Her clear, deep blue eyes, her open
countenance, her grace of carriage, her slim suppleness, and the
smallness of her hands and feet, all combined to create about her an air
of well-bred elegance which was enhanced by a natural grace and charm.
There was nothing loud about her, either in her speech or in her dress.
She spoke softly, and she wore a plain coat and skirt of navy gaberdine,
and a neat little velvet toque which suited her admirably.  She was,
indeed, as beautiful as she was elegant, and as intelligent as she was
charming.

Many a young man about Lombard Street--where Marigold was employed in
the head office of a great joint-stock bank--gazed upon her with
admiration as she went to and fro from business, but with only one of
them, the man at her side, had she ever become on terms of friendship.

Though Gerald Durrant had spoken no word of love, the pair had almost
unconsciously become fast friends.  He was a tall, good-looking young
fellow, with well-brushed hair and a small moustache carefully trimmed,
in whose rather deep-set eyes was an expression of kindly
good-fellowship.  Erect and athletic, his clear-cut features were
typical of the honest, clean-minded young Englishman who, though
well-born, was compelled, like Marigold, to earn his living in the City.

He had served in Flanders through the first year of war, but, being
invalided out, had been since employed as confidential secretary to the
head of a great firm of importers in Mincing Lane.

As, in his well-cut grey tweeds and straw hat, he strode beside her in
silence in the sunshine, he reflected.  What she had told him was
utterly amazing.  The whole affair was, indeed, a mystery.

Marigold had first met Gerald at a little corner table of a certain
small teashop in Fenchurch Street, where she daily took her frugal
luncheon.

One morning as he sat opposite to her he politely passed the salt.  From
that chance meeting they had each day chatted at the Cedar Tea-Rooms,
gradually becoming friends, until one Saturday, he had invited her to
Hampton Court, and they had spent the afternoon in the old-world gardens
of the Palace so reminiscent of Henry the Eighth and Cardinal Wolsey.

That day's excursion had frequently been repeated, for Marigold's great
blue eyes attracted the young man, until one day he cleverly arranged
that she should meet his sister--with whom he lived out at Ealing--and
the outcome was an invitation to tea on the following Sunday.  Thus the
chance-made acquaintance ripened until they found themselves looking
eagerly forward to lunch time on five days each week, when they would
rush to their meeting-place to chatter and enjoy the hour's relaxation
from work.  Hence it was not surprising that Gerald had fallen violently
in love with Marigold, though he had never summoned up sufficient
courage to declare his affection.

"What you've told me is a problem which certainly requires
investigation," he remarked reflectively after a long silence.  "If your
aunt is in any real danger, then she should, I quite agree, leave the
house.  At present, however, I cannot see that she is, or why she should
know anything.  It is our duty to watch and to form our own
conclusions."

"Ah!" cried the girl gratefully, "it's really awfully kind of you,
Gerald, to promise to help me. As you know, I have very few men friends,
and not one, save yourself, in whom I would place this confidence."

"You know me, Marigold," he said, with a smile of satisfaction.  "You
know that I will do all I can to help you to solve this extraordinary
problem."

The problem which the girl had placed before her admirer was certainly a
most puzzling one--sufficiently puzzling, indeed, to excite the
curiosity of anybody to whom it was presented.

Had Marigold Ramsay but foreseen the terrible vortex of uncertainty and
peril into which their inquiries would lead them, it is probable that
she would have hesitated ere she embarked upon an investigation so full
of personal risk to both.

In her ignorance of the cunningly-devised counter-plot, which shielded
from exposure and justice one of the most diabolical and remarkable
conspiracies of modern times, she and her admirer entered cheerfully
upon a policy which led to many exciting and perilous adventures, some
of which I intend to chronicle in these pages.

That you, my reader, shall clearly understand the cause of Marigold
Ramsay's suspicions, it will be as well to here unfold certain queer
circumstances which had happened on the previous Thursday night.

Mr. Bernard Boyne, whom Marigold viewed with such distinct suspicion,
was a work-a-day man who tramped daily the bustling pavements of
Hammersmith, Chiswick, and Bedford Park as an insurance agent, and was
well known and very highly respected. He lived in a cheaply-furnished,
nine-roomed house in Bridge Place, Hammersmith, a dingy third-class
neighbourhood.  The exterior of the place was, in summer, rendered
somewhat more artistic than its neighbours in the same row by the dusty
Virginia creeper which covered its walls and hung untrimmed about its
windows.  Upon the railings was fastened a brass plate, always well
polished, which bore the name "Bernard Boyne--Insurance Agent."

Mr. Boyne had resided in that house for some six years.  He was well
known to all the tradespeople in the neighbourhood--for he paid his
bills weekly--as well as by the working classes whose policies he was so
frequently effecting, and whose small premiums he so assiduously
collected.

He was agent for several insurance companies of second-class standing.
He was also in touch with two well known underwriters at Lloyd's who
would insure his commercial clients against practically anything--except
bankruptcy.

Year in, year out, he was to be seen, always respectably, and even
nattily dressed, passing actively in and about the neighbourhood, keenly
on the alert for any new clients and any fresh "proposals."

Probably Mr. Boyne was one of the best known of local personalities.  He
was a regular attendant at the parish church of St. George the Martyr,
Hammersmith, where he acted as sidesman.  Further, he was honorary
secretary to quite a number of charitable organisations and committees
in Hammersmith, and in consequence had become acquainted with most of
the wealthiest residents.

"Busy" Boyne--for that was what the people of Hammersmith called
him--was a widower, and lived in that small unpretentious house, a very
deaf old woman named Mrs. Felmore--the aunt of Marigold Ramsay--looking
after him.  For several years she had performed the domestic duties, and
she did them well, notwithstanding her infirmity.

Now this is what happened.

On Thursday night, on his return after a strenuous day at about ten
o'clock, Boyne had entered his small sitting-room and taken his bulky
notebook and papers from his pocket.  Then he had thrown off his coat
and sat down to the cold meal which Mrs. Felmore had prepared for him
prior to retiring.  Though the house was so dingy, yet everything
appertaining to its master's comfort was well ordered, as shown by the
fact that the evening paper was lying neatly folded, ready for his hand.

Beneath the hissing incandescent gas-jet Bernard Boyne looked very pale,
his eyes deeply set, his brow furrowed and careworn.  He seemed weary
and out-of-sorts.

"Fool!" he grunted aloud to himself.  "I'm growing nervous!  I suppose
it is that big cheque that I had to-day--seven thousand, eight
hundred--the biggest I've ever had.  I wonder if I ought to tell Lilla?"

The room was the typical home of a man earning an income on commission
just sufficient to enable him to "rub along" in comfort.  It was
certainly not the room of a man who was receiving cheques for such sums
as seven thousand, eight hundred pounds.

At first glance Bernard Boyne, as he stood there in his shirt-sleeves,
was an excellent type of the steady, reliable insurance agent, with no
soul above "proposals" and "premiums."  They constituted his sole aim in
life, now that his "dear wife" was dead.

Nobody suspected the man who so piously passed round the bag in St.
George the Martyr on Sundays to be a man of mystery.  Nobody, indeed,
would ever have dreamed that the active man in question would be placing
cheques to his account of such value as seven thousand odd pounds.

"I wonder how long I shall remain here?" he whispered to himself.  "I
wonder what all these good people would say if they but knew--eh?  _If
they knew_!  But, happily, they don't know!"  He chuckled to himself.

He was silent for a moment as he crossed to rearrange the dusty old
Venetian blinds.

Then he turned to a half-open cupboard beside the fireplace, and from it
took a small wire cage from which he released a tame white rat, which
instantly ran up his arm and settled upon his shoulder.

"Poor little Nibby!" he exclaimed, tenderly stroking its sharp pink
snout with his forefinger. "Have I neglected you?  Poor little
fellow!--a prisoner all day!  But if I let you out when I'm away some
nasty terrier might get you--eh?  Come let me atone for my neglect."

And he placed his pet upon the table, over which the rodent ran to
investigate the remains of the meal.

Boyne stood watching his pet nibbling at a scrap of sausage.

"Ah!" he gasped in a whisper.  "If they knew--but they will never know.
They _can't_!"

A few minutes later his actions were, to say the least, strange.

He flung himself into the old armchair from which the flock stuffing
protruded from the worn-out American cloth, and unbuttoning his dusty
boots, took them off.  Then, in his socks, he crept upstairs, and on the
landing listened at the deaf old woman's door.  Sounds of heavy snoring
apparently satisfied him.

Back again he returned to the parlour, and with a key opened the
opposite cupboard beside the fireplace, from which he took a very long,
loose coat which seemed to be made of white alpaca.  This he shook out
and submitted to close scrutiny.  It was shaped like a monk's habit,
with a leather strap around the waist--a curious garment, for it had a
hood attached, with two slits in it for the eyes.

After careful examination of the strange garment, he put it on over his
head, drawing down the hood over his eyes, which gave him a hideous
appearance--like the ghost of an ancient Inquisitor of Spain, or a
member of the mediaeval Misericordia Society of Italy, dressed in white
instead of black.

Thus attired, he fumbled beneath in his pocket, and then noiselessly
ascended the two flights of stairs to an attic door upon which was the
circular brass plate of a Yale lock.  This he opened, and passing
within, closed the door softly behind him.

Bernard Boyne naturally believed himself alone in the house with old
Mrs. Felmore sound asleep--but, truth to tell, _he was not_!

As he ascended the stairs, Marigold's pale face peered around the
corner.  The shock of seeing such a hideous ghostly form moving silently
upstairs proved almost too much for her.  But clinging on to the
banisters, she managed to repress the cry of alarm which rose to her
lips, and she stood there rooted to the spot--full of wonder and
bewilderment. She listened breathlessly, still standing in the dark
passage which led to the kitchen stairs.  Then she detected the sound of
the key going into the lock of the upstairs room where she knew Mr.
Boyne kept his private papers.

But was it Mr. Boyne?  Or was it an intruder who had adopted that garb
in order to frighten any person he might encounter?  Besides, why should
Mr. Boyne assume such a strange disguise before entering the room where
his business papers were stored?

Now upon that summer night Marigold had called about nine o'clock to
visit her aunt, who had in years past been as a mother to her, to have a
snack of supper, as she often did.  Afterwards she had helped her aunt
to prepare Mr. Boyne's frugal meal.  Then old Mrs. Felmore, feeling
rather unwell, had gone to bed, leaving her niece in the kitchen to
write an urgent letter to Gerald, which she wanted to post before
midnight.

As she finished the letter, she had heard someone enter, and not
desiring that Mr. Boyne should know of her presence there at that hour,
she had moved about quietly, and was just about to escape from the house
when she had seen that strangely-garbed figure ascending the stairs.

The girl's first impulse had been to waken her aunt and raise an alarm
that an intruder had entered the place.  But on seeing that the supper
had been eaten, and that Mr. Boyne's hat and coat lay upon the sofa, she
at once decided that the figure that had ascended the stairs to the
locked room was actually that of the master of the house.

"Why is he dressed like that?" she asked herself in a whisper, as she
stood in the front parlour. "What can it mean?"

She glanced around the room.  The cupboard beside the fireplace, which
stood open, and from which Boyne had taken his strange disguise, caught
her eye.  She had never before seen that cupboard open, for her aunt had
always told her that Mr. Boyne kept some of his important insurance
papers there. Therefore, with curiosity, the girl approached it, finding
it practically empty, save for a woman's big racoon muff, and with it a
photograph--that of a handsome, well-preserved woman of about forty,
across the front of which had been scrawled in a thin, feminine hand the
signature, "Lilla, January, 1919."

Who was Lilla?  She wondered.

Mr. Boyne she knew as a pleasant, easy-going man, full of generosity so
far as his limited means allowed.  He was a widower, who frequently
referred to his "poor dear wife," and would descant upon her good
qualities and how affectionately they had lived together for ten years.

The photograph, which she examined beneath the light, was quite a new
one, and dated--hence it could not be that of the late Mrs. Boyne.

"I'll come back and tell auntie to-morrow," she said to herself.  "She
ought to know--or one night she'll see him and get a shock like I've
had.  And her heart is not too strong.  Yes--I must warn her--then no
doubt she'll watch."

With those words she dabbed her hair in front of the cheap mirror over
the mantelshelf, and then treading on tiptoe, went to the front door and
let herself out.

This was the strange story Marigold had related to Gerald Durrant on
that sunny afternoon beside the Thames--a story which had aroused his
curiosity and held him fascinated.




                              *CHAPTER II*

                       *WHO IS MRS. BRAYBOURNE?*


Bernard Boyne was certainly a mystery man in Hammersmith, yet nobody
suspected it.  In all the years he had lived in the neighbourhood his
actions had never aroused a single breath of suspicion.

In pious black he passed the collection bag around to the congregation
of St. George the Martyr each Sunday morning, and afterwards, with a
deep bow, handed the bag to the rubicund vicar of his parish.

Often he had been approached to serve upon the municipality of the
borough, but he had always declined because of stress of work and for
"family" reasons.  Mr. Boyne could have achieved the highest local
honours, aldermanic and otherwise, had he cared for them, but
notwithstanding his great popularity, he was ever retiring, and even
anxious to efface himself.

When that night he descended the stairs of his house in Bridge Place,
all unconscious that he had been observed ascending them, he entered his
little parlour, where he divested himself of the ugly white overall and
locked it away, together with the woman's muff and the photograph.  Then
he paced the room in indecision, ignorant that Marigold had only vacated
it a few minutes before.

He caught his pet, Nibby, after several attempts, and having replaced
him in his cage, again stood with knit brows, still apparently uncertain
how to act.  He was in a bad humour, for now and then he uttered
imprecations beneath his breath.  Whatever had occurred upstairs had no
doubt upset him.  A further imprecation fell from his lips as he cursed
his luck, and then, with sudden resolve, he resumed his boots, took his
felt hat and stick, turned out the gas, and, going out into the narrow
hall, extinguished the light and left the house.

He was in a bad temper on that warm summer's night as he strode
hurriedly to the Hammersmith Broadway station, whence he took ticket to
Sloane Square.

"Rotten luck!  Lionel is a fool!" he declared to himself viciously, as
he approached the pigeon-hole to take his ticket.  "But one can't have
all the good things of life.  One must fail sometimes.  And yet," he
added, "I can't think why I've failed.  But so long as it isn't a bad
omen, I don't care!  Why should I?"

And he took his ticket and descended the stairs to the train.

On arrival at Sloane Square he walked along to Pont Street to a large,
red-brick house, into which he admitted himself with the latchkey upon
his chain, a key very similar to that of the locked room in Bridge
Place.

In the well-furnished hall he encountered a smart, good-looking French
lady's maid.

"Ah!  Good-evening, Annette.  Is Madame at home?" he asked.

"Oui, monsieur," the girl promptly replied. "Madame is upstairs in the
boudoir."

Boyne, who was evidently no stranger there, hung up his hat and passed
upstairs to a room on the second floor, a cosy, tastefully-furnished
apartment, where, at a table upon which stood a reading-lamp with a
green silk shade, a handsome, dark-haired woman in a pearl-grey evening
frock sat writing a letter.

"Hallo, Lilla!  I'm glad you haven't gone to bed!" he exclaimed.  "I
want to have a chat with you.  I met Annette downstairs.  A pity that
infernal girl hasn't gone to her room.  I don't want her to overhear
anything.  Recollect Celine!"

"I'll send the girl to bed," said the woman, pressing an electric
button.  "Anything wrong?"

"Nothing very seriously wrong," was his reply.

And at his words the woman, who had betrayed alarm at sight of him, gave
a sigh of relief.

Bernard Boyne flung himself into a silk-covered easy-chair, and,
clasping his hands behind his head, gazed around the luxurious little
room.  It was, indeed, very different to his own surroundings in drab,
work-a-day Hammersmith.  Here taste and luxury were displayed on every
hand; a soft, old-rose carpet, with hangings and upholstery to match--a
woman's den which had been furnished regardless of expense by one of the
best firms in the West End. Truth to tell, that elegant West End house
was his own, and the handsome woman, Lilla, though she passed as Mrs.
Braybourne, and was very popular in quite a good set, was his own wife.

Husband and wife lived apart.  They did so for a purpose.  Bernard was a
hard-working insurance agent, a strict Churchman, perfectly upright and
honest, though he lived his struggling life in Hammersmith.  Truly, the
_menage_ in Pont Street was both unusual and curious.  Boyne, known to
the servants as Mr. Braybourne, was very often away for weeks at a time.
Then suddenly he would return and spend a week with his wife, being
absent, however, all day. Neither dear old Mrs. Felmore nor all his wide
circle of Hammersmith friends ever dreamed that he kept up another
establishment in one of the best streets in London, a thoroughfare where
a few doors away on either side were the legations of certain important
European States.

"My dear Lilla, we can't be too careful," he said, with a kindly smile.
"Our business is a very ticklish one.  Ena agrees with me that Annette,
your maid, has picked up too much English, and in consequence is a
danger."

"Rubbish, my clear old Bernard!" laughed the handsome woman, upon whose
fingers sparkled several valuable rings.  "All that we need is to
exercise due discretion."

"I know.  When the game is crooked one has to be all the more careful."

"You don't seem to be in the sweetest of tempers to-night," remarked his
wife, rather piqued.  His visit was unexpected, and to her it portended
unpleasantness.  Not because discord ever existed between them.  On the
contrary, they were bound together by certain secrets which neither one
nor the other dared to disclose.  Lilla Boyne feared her husband to
exactly the same extent that he feared her.

In that house in Pont Street, Mr. Boyne kept his well-cut suits, his
evening clothes, his opera hat, and his expensive suit-case marked
"B.B.," for on entry there he at once effaced his identity as the humble
insurance agent, and became Bernard Braybourne, a man of means, and
husband of the good-looking woman who in the course of five or six years
had been taken up by quite a number of well-known people.

"I didn't expect you to-night," she remarked rather wearily.  "I thought
you'd have been here yesterday."

"I couldn't come.  Sorry!" he replied.

"To-night I went to dine at Lady Betty's.  You accepted, you know.  So I
apologised and said you had been called suddenly to Leeds last night,"
she said.  "That idea of your candidature at Leeds at the next election
works famously.  You have to go and meet your committee, I tell them,
and it always satisfies the curious.  All of them hope you'll get in at
the by-election when old Sammie dies, as he must very soon.  They say
the doctors have only given him three months more."

"Then before that date I'll have to retire from the contest," remarked
her husband, with a grin.

"Oh!  I'll watch that for you all right.  Have you got that cheque?"

"Yes--to-day.  It came from my new solicitor--seven thousand, eight
hundred!"

"Good!  I'm glad they've paid up.  I began to fear that there might be
some little hitch.  They were so long-winded."

"So did I, to tell you the truth.  But it's all right, and the new
lawyer, a smart young fellow in the City, suspects nothing.  I've
already sent him his fee--so that's settled him."

"Will you employ him again?"

"I never employ a solicitor a second time, my dear Lilla.  That would be
a fatal mistake," was his reply.  "But what I came to tell you mainly is
that I've had a failure--a mysterious failure!  Things haven't turned
out exactly as I expected they would."

"Failure!" gasped the woman, with disappointment upon her dark, handsome
face.  "Then we must postpone it?  How annoying!"

"Yes.  But perhaps it's all for the best, Lilla. There was an element of
danger.  I told you that from the first."

"Danger!  Rubbish!" declared his wife, with boldness, the diamonds
flashing upon her fingers. "There's no danger!  Of that I'm quite
convinced. There was much more in that other little affair last winter.
I was full of apprehension then--though I never told you of it."

"Well, at any rate, I haven't succeeded in the little business I've been
attempting this last fortnight, so we'll have to postpone it."

"Perhaps your failure is due to the presence of your deaf old lady in
the house," laughed his wife. "I passed the place in the car about a
fortnight ago. Ugh!  What a house!" and she shuddered.

"Yes, you might say so if you lived there and ate Mrs. Felmore's cold
sausage for your supper, as I have to-night.  Yet it must be done.  If
one makes money one has to make some sacrifice, especially if the money
is made--well, not exactly on the square, shall we say?"  And he
grinned.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Away in North Wales three days later.

A beautiful moonlit evening by the Irish Sea. Over the Great Orme the
moon shone brilliantly across the calm waters lazily lapping the bay of
Llandudno, which was filled at the moment with an overflowing crowd of
holiday folk, mostly from Yorkshire and Lancashire.

All the hotels and boarding houses were crowded out, and there were
stories of belated trippers, many of whom were on their first seaside
holiday after the stress of war, being compelled to sleep in bathing
machines.

The lamps along the promenade were all aglow, the pier blazed with
light, and across the bay came the strains of the orchestra playing
selections from the latest revue.

In the big lounge of the Beach Hotel, which faces the sea in the centre
of the bay, sat a well-preserved, middle-aged woman in a striking black
dinner gown, trimmed with jade-coloured ninon, and wearing a beautiful
jade bangle and ear-rings to match.  The visitor, whose hair was
remarkable because of its bright chestnut hue--almost red, indeed--had
been there for three weeks.  She was a widow, a Mrs. Augusta Morrison,
hailing from Carsphairn, in Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland, whose late
husband had great interests in a big shipbuilding works at Govan.

Of rather loud type, as befitted the widow of a Scotch shipbuilder who
had commenced life in the shipyard, she dressed extravagantly, greatly
to the envy of the bejewelled wives of a few Lancashire war
millionaires, who, unable to gain admittance to that little piece of
paradise, the Oakwood Park Hotel, beyond Conway, were compelled to mix
with the holiday crowd on the seashore of Llandudno.

The hotel lounge was at the moment almost empty, for most of the
visitors were either on the pier or had gone out for a stroll in the
moonlight.  But Mrs. Morrison sat near the door chatting with Charles
Emery, a young Manchester solicitor who had only been married since he
had been demobilised six months before, and who had come to Llandudno
with his wife, as is the custom of young married folk of Lancashire.

Once or twice the rich widow--who had hired a car for her stay in North
Wales--had invited Emery and his wife to go for runs with her to Bangor,
and across the Menai Bridge to Holyhead, or to Carnarvon, Bettws-y-coed,
St. Asaph, and other places. From time to time she had told them of her
loneliness in her big country house in one of the wildest districts in
Scotland, and her intention to go abroad that winter--probably to Italy.

"My wife has gone to the theatre with Mr. and Mrs. Challoner," Emery was
saying, as he lazily smoked his cigarette.  "I had some letters to
write--business letters that came from the office this morning--so I
stayed in."

"Have you finished them?" asked the handsome widow, whose hair was
always so remarked, and her eyes large and luminous.

"Yes," he replied.  "I suppose I shall soon have to be back in harness
again in Deansgate.  But we shall both cherish the fondest memories of
your great kindness to us, Mrs. Morrison."

"It's really nothing, I assure you," laughed the widow merrily.  "You
have taken compassion upon me in my horribly lonely life, and I much
appreciate it.  Ah!" she sighed.  "You can never imagine how lonely a
woman can be who goes about the world aimlessly, as I go about.  I
travel here and there, sometimes on trips abroad, by sea, or by rail,
often to the south of Europe, but I make no friends. Possibly it is my
own fault.  I may be too exclusive. And yet I never wish to be."

"I really don't think that!" he said gallantly. "At any rate, you've
given us both a real ripping time!"

"I'm so glad you've enjoyed the little runs.  But not more, I'm sure,
than I have myself.  I cannot live without movement.  I love crowds.
That's why I love cities--Manchester, London, Paris, and Rome. Where I
live, up in Kirkcudbrightshire, it is one of the wildest and least
explored districts of Great Britain.  Between Loch Ken and Loch Doon,
over the Cairnsmuir, the people are the most rural in all our island,
quiet, honest folk, with no soul above their sheep and their cows.  You
and your wife must come north one day to Carsphairn and stay with me."

"I'm sure we should both be only too delighted to accept your
hospitality, Mrs. Morrison," he said. "I'm afraid we can never repay you
for your kindness to us.  We are leaving next Monday."

"Oh, you have four more days!  I'm motoring to Bettws-y-coed again
to-morrow.  You must both come with me, and we'll lunch at the Waterloo,
as we did before.  There has been rain these last few days, and the
Swallow Falls will no doubt be grand."

And so it was arranged.

Next day all three went in the car up the beautiful valley of the
Conway, with the wild hills on either side, through Eglwys Bach and
Llanrwst, past Gwydyr Castle, and on by the Falcon Rock to that gem of
North Wales, Bettws-y-coed.

To Mrs. Emery the widow was exceedingly amiable, and the day passed most
pleasantly.

As they were motoring back through the mountains, purple in the sunset,
between Capel Curig and Bangor, the widow, turning to Emery, suddenly
said:

"I wonder, Mr. Emery, if you would advise me upon a little point of
business?  I'm rather perturbed, and I would so much like your
professional advice.  Can I see you after dinner to-night?"

"Most certainly," was his reply.  "Any advice I can give you I will do
so to the best of my ability," said the sharp young lawyer, well pleased
at the prospect of a wealthy client.

That night at dinner Mrs. Morrison, radiant and handsome, wore a
striking gown of black-and-gold, with a gold band in her red hair, and
her string of fine pearls.  In the big white-and-gold dining-room she
was the most remarked of all the women there, but she pretended to take
no notice of the sensation caused by her entrance into the room.  Yet
that gown had cost her sixty guineas in Dover Street, and, in secret,
she was amused at the excitement its appearance had caused among the
moneyed folk of Lancashire-by-the-Sea, who, after all, be it said, are
honest people and who are more thorough than the shallow "Society" of
post-war London.

After dinner, while Mrs. Emery went into the lounge and joined a woman
and her daughter whom she knew, her husband went to Mrs. Morrison's
sitting-room, where he found coffee awaiting him.

She produced a big silver box of cigarettes, and when she had served him
with coffee and liqueur she lit a cigarette and settled herself to talk.

"The fact, Mr. Emery, is this," the woman with the wonderful hair
commenced, when he had seated himself.  "My late husband was a
shipbuilder at Govan.  Only recently I discovered that some twenty years
ago he was guilty of some sharp practice in a financial deal which,
while he and his friends enriched themselves, a man named Braybourne and
his wife were both ruined.  Braybourne died recently, but his widow is
living in London.  Now knowledge of this affair has greatly upset me,
for I had the greatest faith in my dear husband's honesty."

"Naturally," remarked the young lawyer.  "The knowledge of such a stigma
attaching to his name must grieve you."

"Exactly.  And I want somehow to make reparation. Not while I am
alive--but after my death," she said.  "I have been wondering what
course would be best to pursue.  I don't know Mrs. Braybourne, and
probably she is in ignorance of my existence. Yet I should much like to
do something in order to relieve my conscience.  What would you advise?"

The young solicitor was silent for a few moments. At last he replied:

"Well, there are several courses open.  You could make her an anonymous
gift.  But that would be difficult, for with a little inquiry she could
discover the source of the payment."

"Ah!  I don't want her to know anything!"

"I quite agree with that.  You could, of course, make a will in her
favour--leave her a legacy."

Mrs. Morrison remained silent for a while.

"Yes," she said at last, "that would be a way of easing my conscience
regarding my husband's offence."

"Or, another way, you could insure your life in her favour.  Then, at
your death, she would receive the money unexpectedly," he suggested.

"That's rather a brilliant suggestion, Mr. Emery!" she replied eagerly.
"But I know nothing about insurance matters.  How can I do it?  What
have I to do and where shall I go to insure?"

"Well, Mrs. Morrison, I happen to be agent for a first-class life
assurance company, the Universal, whose head offices are in Cornhill,
London.  If you so desire, I would be very happy to place a proposal
before them," he said enthusiastically, for it meant a very substantial
commission.

"I shall be very glad indeed, Mr. Emery, if you can carry the business
through for me."

"With the utmost pleasure," was the young man's reply.  "Er--what amount
do you propose?"

"Oh!  I hardly know.  Some really substantial sum, I think.  My husband,
I have learned, got some twenty thousand pounds out of Mr. Braybourne.
At least I would like to give her back half that sum."

"Ten thousand!  How extremely generous of you, Mrs. Morrison.  Of
course, it's a large sum, and will mean a special premium, but no doubt
the company will, providing you pass the medical test, issue the
policy."

She thanked him for his promise to take up the matter for her.  Then he
went down to the writing-room to pen a letter to the Universal Assurance
Company, while the handsome red-haired widow passed along the lounge
and, with her merry chatter, rejoined his wife.




                             *CHAPTER III*

                     *THE "GAME"--AND ITS PLAYERS*


On the following morning Mr. Emery, the young solicitor, entered Mrs.
Morrison's sitting-room at Llandudno with a telegram in his hand.

"I've just had this from the manager of the Universal.  They are
prepared to do the business and are writing me full particulars.  I
shall get them by to-morrow morning's post.  I've wired to my clerk,
Wilson, to post me a proposal form and some other papers."

Emery, his one thought being the big commission upon the business,
entered Mrs. Morrison's room twenty-four hours later with a number of
papers in his hand.

He sat down with the rich widow, and put before her the proposal form--a
paper which had printed upon it a long list of questions, mostly
inquisitorial. The bed-rock question of that document was "Who are you,
and are you subject to any of the ills that human flesh is heir to?"

Question after question she read, and her answers he wrote down in the
space reserved for them.  Once or twice she hesitated before replying,
but he put down her hesitation to a natural reserve.

The filling up of the form took some time, after which she appended her
signature in a bold hand, and this completed the proposal.

"I fear it will be necessary for you to go to London to pass the
doctor," he said.  "When would that be convenient?"

"Any time after next Wednesday," she replied. "As a matter of fact, I
have some shopping to do in town before I return to Scotland, so I can
kill two birds with one stone."

"Excellent!  They will, of course, make it as easy for you as possible.
You will hear from Mr. Gray at the head office.  Where shall you stay in
town?

"With a friend of mine--a Mrs. Pollen."  And she gave him an address in
Upper Brook Street which he wrote down.

Before eleven o'clock Mrs. Morrison had dispatched a telegram addressed
to "Braybourne, 9b, Pont Street, London," which read:


_"All preliminaries settled.  Shall be in London end of week._--AUGUSTA
MORRISON."


Meanwhile, the solicitor, greatly elated at securing such a remunerative
piece of work, sent the completed proposal to the head office of the
company in London, and on the following day, accompanied by his wife,
returned to his home in Manchester, after what had turned out to be a
very profitable as well is beneficial holiday.

Before leaving, Mrs. Morrison arranged that he should carry the whole
matter through, her parting injunction being:

"Remember--tell the Company to write to me at Upper Brook Street, and
not to Scotland.  And always write to me yourself to London."

Now that same evening, after Emery's departure, there arrived at the
Beach Hotel, wearing rimless pince-nez, a dark, strongly-built man, well
dressed, and with a heavy crocodile suit-case which spoke mutely of
wealth.  He signed the visitor's form as Pomeroy Graydon, and gave his
address as "Carleon Road, Roath, Cardiff, Shipbroker."

He was late, and ate his dinner alone.  Afterwards he went out for a
stroll on the esplanade in the direction of the Little Orme, when, after
walking nearly half a mile, he suddenly encountered the red-haired
widow, who was attired plainly in navy blue with a small hat, having
evidently changed her dress after dinner.

"Well, Ena!" he exclaimed, lifting his soft felt hat politely.  "I'm
here, you see!  I thought it best to come up and see you.  I'm at your
hotel as Mr. Graydon of Cardiff."

"I'm awfully glad you've come, Bernie," she said. "I rather expected
you."

"As soon as Lilla got your wire I started, and was fortunate to get to
Euston just in time for the Irish mail--changed at Chester, and here I
am!"

The pair strolled to a convenient seat close to where the waves lazily
lapped upon the wall of the esplanade--for the tide was up--and the
night a perfect one with a full white moon.

"Everything going well?" asked the smartly dressed man, whose pose in
Hammersmith was so entirely different.  He spoke in an eager tone.

"Yes, as far as I can see it's all plain sailing. I'm doing my part, and
leave you and Lilla to do the rest.  I've met here a very nice young
fellow--as I intended--a useful solicitor named Emery, of Manchester. He
is carrying the matter through for me. He's agent of the Universal."

"A first-class office."

"Well, I'm insuring with them in Lilla's favour."

"Have you carried out the plan we discussed?"

"To the very letter!  Trust me, my dear Bernie."

"I always do, Ena," he declared, gazing across the moonlit sea.  They
were alone on the seat, and there was none to overhear:

"Ten thousand is a decent sum.  Let's hope it will be all over soon.  I
sometimes have bad quarters of an hour--when I think!" he remarked.

"The sums assured have been higher and higher," she said.  "We started
with five hundred--you recollect the woman Bayliss?--and now we are
always in thousands.  Only you, Bernard, know how the game should be
played.  I do my part, but it is your brain which evolves all this
business for which the companies are so eager, and which is so
wonderful."

"True, our plan works well," Boyne admitted, still gazing over the sea.
"We've all of us made thousands out of it--haven't we?"

"Yes.  I can see no loophole by which the truth might leak out--save
one," she said very seriously.

"And what's that?"'

"Your visits to your wife," was her reply.  "Suppose somebody watched
you, and saw you leave your frowsy little house in Hammersmith, go to
Lilla in Pont Street, and blossom forth into a gentleman of means; it
would certainly arouse a nasty suspicion. Therefore you should always be
most careful."

"I am.  Never fear," he said.  "Recollect, nobody in Hammersmith knows
that Lilla Braybourne is my wife."

"They don't know.  But they might suspect things, which may lead
eventually to an awkward inquiry, and then----?"

"Oh! my dear Ena, don't contemplate unpleasant things!" he urged, with a
shrug of the shoulders. "I know you are a clever woman--more clever by
far than Lilla herself--therefore I always rely upon your discretion and
foresight.  Now, tell me--what has happened up to date?"

In reply she told him briefly of her meeting with the young solicitor
Emery--which she had prearranged, by the way--and how she had
entertained the newly-married pair.

"They, of course, believe you to be Mrs. Augusta Morrison, of
Carsphairn, widow of old Joe Morrison, the great shipbuilder of Govan?"
he remarked, smiling.

"Exactly.  As you know, I paid a visit in secret to Carsphairn six weeks
ago, and found out quite a lot.  This I retailed to the Emerys, and they
took it all in.  I described Carsphairn to them, and showed them the
snapshots of the place which I took surreptitiously when I was up there.
Indeed, I gave a couple of them to Mrs. Emery--to make evidence."

"Excellent!" he exclaimed.  "You never leave anything undone, Ena."

"One must be thorough in everything if one desires success."

"And what is your address?"

"I gave it to my own flat in Upper Brook Street--care of Ena
Pollen--widow."

"So you will come to London?"

"Yes--I have to go there shopping before I return to Scotland," she
replied grimly.  "I am staying with Mrs. Pollen."

"Good!  It will be far the best for their London doctors to examine you.
If you were examined up here they might resist the claim.  If they did
that--well, it would open up the whole business, and we certainly can't
afford to arouse the very least little bit of doubt."

"Hardly," she laughed.  "Well, I've played the game properly, my dear
Bernie.  My name is Morrison, and I am the widow of old Joe Morrison,
the woman with the red hair, and I live at Carsphairn,
Kirkcudbrightshire, the fine sporting estate left me by my late husband.
All that is upon the records of the Universal Life Assurance
Corporation."

"Excellent!  You've established an undeniable identity--red hair and
everything!" he said, again gazing reflectively out across the rippling
waters. "You have taken the first step."

"The second move is that Mrs. Morrison goes to London on a shopping
visit, prior to going abroad," the widow said.

"Really, you are marvellous, Ena!" declared the humble insurance agent
of Hammersmith.  "Your foresight always carries you to success."

"In a number of cases it has done so, I admit," the woman laughed.
"When one's identity is not exactly as one represents, one has to have
one's eyes skinned day and night.  Men--even the shrewdest lawyers--are
always easily gulled.  Why?  Because of the rapacious maws the legal
profession have for fees.  Women are always dangerous, for they are too
frequently jealous of either good looks or pretty frocks.  A man I can
usually manage--a woman, seldom, unless she is in love.  Then I side
with her in her love affair and so gain her confidence."

"Ena, I repeat I hold you in admiration as one of the cleverest women I
have ever known.  Nothing deters you--nothing perturbs you!  You fix a
plan, and you carry it through in your own way--always with profit to
our little combination."

"And very substantial profit, I venture to think, eh?"

"I agree," he said, with a grim laugh.

"All thanks to you, my dear Bernie," the red-haired woman said.  "But
really I am growing just a little apprehensive.  Why--I don't know, I
cannot tell.  But somehow I fear we may play the game once too often.
And what then--eh?"

"Funnily enough, I've experienced the same curiously apprehensive
feeling of late," he said.  "I always try, of course, to crush it out,
just as I crush out any other little pricks of conscience which occur to
me when I awake in the mornings."

"Very strange that we should both of us entertain apprehensive
feelings!" she remarked very thoughtfully.  "I hope it's no ill omen!
Do you think it is?"

"No," he laughed.  "Don't let us seek trouble--for Heaven's sake.  At
present there is not the slightest danger.  Of that I feel confident.
Let us go forward.  When shall you go up to London?"

"To-morrow.  I go to visit my dear friend, Mrs. Pollen--as I have told
you."

He laughed.

"So really you are going on a visit to yourself--eh?  Excellent!  Really
you are unique, Ena!"

"Well--it is the only way, and it will work well."

Then the strange pair, who were upon such intimate terms, rose and
strolled leisurely side by side back towards the opposite end of the
promenade, chatting merrily the while.

When approaching the Beach Hotel they halted, and the woman bade the man
good-bye.  Afterwards he sank upon a seat in one of the shelters, while
she walked on and entered the hotel.

Not until half an hour later, after he had taken a stroll along to the
end of the pier, where the band was still playing, did he return to the
hotel. Mrs. Morrison was at the moment sitting in the lounge chatting
with two men visitors.  The eyes of the pair met as he passed, but
neither gave any sign of recognition.

To those in the lounge the two were absolutely strangers to each other.

Little did the other visitors dream of the dastardly, even demoniacal,
plot that was being so skilfully woven in their midst.

Next afternoon Bernard Boyne stepped from out of the Holyhead express
upon Euston platform and drove in a taxi to Pont Street, where he was
greeted warmly by his wife, who had been informed of his advent by
telegram from Chester.

"Well?" she asked, when the door of the luxurious drawing-room was
closed and they were alone.  "And how did you find Ena?"

"She's splendid!  All goes well," was his enthusiastic reply.  "She's
got hold of a young Manchester solicitor who is carrying the policy
through all right. He happens to be an agent of the Universal.  She's on
her way back to London now.  I wasn't seen with her in the hotel, of
course."

"When is she coming here?"

"To-night at nine.  She wants to see you."

"I think the less she sees of me just now the better, don't you,
Bernie?"

"I quite agree.  We don't want anyone to recognise you as friends when
the time comes," replied Boyne.  "As soon as she gets passed by the
doctors--both of them unknown to any of us--which is a blessing--she'll
have to go up to Scotland."

"To New Galloway again?"

"No.  To Ardlui, that pretty little village at the head of Loch Lomond.
The inquiries I have been making of the servants at Carsphairn show that
it is the lady's intention to go with her maid to Ardlui for a
fortnight, and thence to Edinburgh for another fortnight."

"Really, Bernie, you are wonderful in the way you pry into people's
intentions."

"Only by knowing the habits and intentions of our friends can we hope to
be successful," was his reply, as he flung himself back among the silken
cushions of the couch and lazily lit a cigarette.

"So Ena will have to go to Scotland again?"

"Yes.  She ought to pass the doctors in a week, for this young fellow is
pushing it through because of the handsome fee she will give him, and
then, in the following week, she must put on her best frocks and best
behaviour and take a 'sleeper' on the nine twenty-five from Euston to
Glasgow."

"What an adventure!" remarked the handsome woman before him.

"Of course.  But we are out for big money this time, remember."

"You have examined the whole affair, I suppose, and considered it from
every standpoint--eh?"

"Of course I have.  As far as I can discover, there is no flaw in our
armour.  This young solicitor is newly married, and is much gratified
that the wealthy Mrs. Morrison should take such notice of his young
wife.  But you know Ena well enough to be sure that she plays the game
all right.  She's the rich widow to the very letter, and talks about her
'dear husband' in a manner that is really pathetic. She declares that
they were such a devoted couple."

"Yes.  Ena can play the game better than any woman in England," agreed
his wife.  "Have some tea?"

"No; it's too hot," he replied.  "Get me some lemonade."

And she rose, and presently brought him a glass of lemonade.  She
preferred to wait upon him, for she was always suspicious of the maids
trying to listen to their conversation, which, however, was discreet and
well guarded.

That night at about half-past nine, husband and wife having dined
together _tete-a-tete_--being waited on by the smart young Italian
footman--Ena Pollen was ushered into the drawing-room.

"Oh!  Welcome back, dear!" cried Mrs. Braybourne, jumping up and
embracing her friend, making pretence, of course, before the servant.
"Sit down.  I had no idea you were in London!  I thought you were
somewhere in the wilds of Wales."

Then, when the door had closed, her attitude altered to one of deep
seriousness.

"Well," she said, "according to Bernie, everything goes well, doesn't
it?"

"Excellently," replied the other.  "You see in me Mrs. Augusta Morrison,
widow, of Carsphairn, New Galloway, who is in London on a visit to her
friend, Ena Pollen, and who is about to be passed as a first-class
life!"  And she laughed, the other two smiling grimly.

"I congratulate you upon finding that young solicitor.  What's his
name?"

"Emery--just getting together a practice and looking out for the big
commission on the first of my premiums," she said.  "We've met those
before.  Do you recollect that fellow Johnson-Hughes?  Phew! what an
ass!"

"But he was over head and ears in love with you, my dear Ena," said
Boyne, "and you know it."

"Don't be sarcastic, Bernie!" she exclaimed, with a pout.  "Whether he
was in love with me or not, it doesn't matter.  We brought off the
little affair successfully, and we all had a share of the pickings. In
these post-war profiteering days it is only by callous dishonour and
double-dealing one can make both ends meet.  It begins in the Cabinet
and ends with the marine store dealer.  Honesty spells ruin. That's my
opinion."

"I quite agree," Lilla declared.  "If we had all three played a straight
game, where should we be now?"

"Living in Bridge Place," remarked Boyne, whereat the two women laughed
merrily.

                     *      *      *      *      *

That night Marigold met Gerald at Mark Lane Station, and they travelled
westward together on the way home.  In the Underground train they
chatted about the mystery of Bridge Place, but amid the crush and
turmoil of home-going City workers they could say but little.

Marigold had been again to see her deaf aunt, who was still unsuspicious
of the strange state of affairs in her master's humble home.

Gerald was next day compelled to accompany his principal up north to a
conference upon food prices, and for ten days he remained away.
Therefore Marigold could only watch and wait.

She went to Bridge Place several times, and saw Mr. Boyne there.  He was
always cheerful and chatty.  About him there seemed nothing really
suspicious.  Indeed, when she considered it all, she began to wonder
whether she had not made a fool of herself.




                              *CHAPTER IV*

                         *PROGRESS OF THE PLOT*


In the dull, sombre consulting-room of Sir Humphrey Sinclair in Queen
Anne Street, Cavendish Square--a room with heavy mahogany furniture,
well-worn carpet, a big writing-table set in the window, and an
adjustable couch against the wall--sat the pseudo Mrs. Augusta Morrison,
who desired to insure her life.

At the table sat the great physician, a clean-shaven, white-haired man,
in large, round, gold-rimmed spectacles.  He was dressed in a grey
cashmere suit--for the weather was unbearably hot that morning--and,
truth to tell, he was longing for his annual vacation at his pretty
house by the sea at Frinton.

In the medical world Humphrey Sinclair had made a great name for
himself, and had had among his patients various European royalties,
besides large numbers of the British aristocracy and well-known people
of both sexes.  Quiet mannered, soft spoken, and exquisitely polite, he
was always a favourite with his lady patients, while Lady Sinclair
herself moved in a very good set.

Having arranged a number of papers which the Universal had sent to him,
he took one upon which a large number of questions were printed with
blank spaces for the proposer's replies.  Then, turning to her, he said,
with a smile:

"I fear, Mrs. Morrison, that I shall be compelled to ask you a number of
questions.  Please understand that they are not merely out of curiosity,
but the company claim a right to know the family and medical history of
any person whose life they insure.

"I perfectly understand, Sir Humphrey," replied the handsome woman.
"Ask me any questions you wish, and I will try to reply to them to the
best of my ability."

"Very well," he said.  "Let's begin."  And he commenced to put to her
questions regarding the date of her birth, the cause of the deaths of
her father and her mother, whether she had ever suffered from this
disease or that, dozens of which were enumerated. And so on.

For nearly half an hour the great doctor plied her with questions which
he read aloud from the paper, and then wrote down her replies in the
spaces reserved for them.

Never once did she hesitate--she knew those questions off by heart,
indeed, and had her replies ready, replies culled from a budget of
information which during the past three months had been cleverly
collected.  Truth to tell, she was replying quite accurately to the
questions, but only so far as Mrs. Morrison of Carsphairn was concerned.
The medical history she gave was correct in every detail concerning Mrs.
Morrison.

But, after all, was not the proposal upon the life of Mrs. Morrison, and
did not the famous physician believe her to be the widow of Carsphairn?

Sir Humphrey asked her to step upon the weighing machine in the corner
of the room, and afterwards he measured her height and wrote it down
with a grunt of satisfaction.

Then, after further examination, and putting many questions, he reseated
himself, and turned to the page upon which his own private opinion was
to be recorded.

"I hope you don't find much wrong with me?" asked the lady, with a
little hesitation.

"No, my dear madam--nothing that I can detect," was the physician's
reply as he gazed at her through his big glasses.  "Of course, my
colleague, Doctor Hepburn, may discover something.  I shall have to ask
you to call upon him."

"When?"

"Any time you care to arrange.  To-day--if you like.  He may be at home.
Shall I see?"

"I do so wish you would, Sir Humphrey," Ena said.  "I want to get back
to Scotland, as I have to go to Ardlui next week."

The great doctor took the telephone at his elbow, and was soon talking
to Doctor Hepburn, with whom he arranged for the lady to call in an
hour.

Then Sir Humphrey scribbled the address in Harley Street on a slip of
paper, and with a few polite words of reassurance, rang his bell, and
the man-servant conducted her out.

"An exceptionally pretty woman," grunted old Sir Humphrey to himself
when she had gone. "Highly intelligent, and a first-class life."

And he sat down to record his own private views as to the physical
condition of the person proposed for insurance.

Ena idled before the shop windows in Oxford Street for three-quarters of
an hour, and then took a taxi to Harley Street, where she found Doctor
Stanley Hepburn, a short, stout, brown-bearded man of rather abrupt
manner.

In his smart, up-to-date consulting-room he put the same questions to
her, wearying as they were, and parrot-like she answered them.

"Truly, I'm having a busy morning, doctor," she remarked, with a sigh,
laughing at the same time.

"Apparently," he said, smiling.  "I must apologise for bothering you
with all these questions. Sir Humphrey has, no doubt, gone through them
all."

"He has."

"Well, never mind.  Forgive me, and let's get along," he said briskly.

And he proceeded with question after question. At last, after an
examination exactly like that conducted by Sir Humphrey, Doctor Hepburn
reseated himself at his table, and said:

"Well, Mrs. Morrison, I don't think I need keep you any longer."

"Are you quite satisfied with me?" she asked boldly.

He was silent for a few seconds.

"As far as I myself am concerned I see no reason whatever why the
company should not accept the risk," was his reply.  "Of course, I don't
know the nature of Sir Humphrey's report; but I expect it coincides with
my own.  I can detect nothing to cause apprehension, and, in normal
circumstances, you should live to quite old age."

"Thanks!  That is a very agreeable piece of information," she said.

Then, his waiting-room being crowded--for he had given her a special
appointment--he rose and, bowing, dismissed her, saying:

"I shall send in my report to the company to-night, therefore the matter
should go through without delay."

Afterwards, as she walked along Harley Street, a great weight having
been lifted from her mind, she hailed a taxi and drove back to her
pretty flat in Upper Brook Street, where a dainty lunch awaited her.

To answer frankly and correctly those questions had been an ordeal.
Those queries were so cleverly arranged that if, after death, the
replies to any of them are found to be false the company would be able
to resist the claim upon it.  To give a true and faithful account of
your parents' ailments and your own illnesses is difficult enough, but
to give an equally true account of those of another person is extremely
difficult and presents many pitfalls.  And none knew that better than
Ena Pollen.

After lunch, she rested for an hour, as was her habit in summer, and
then she took a taxi to Pont Street, where she had tea with Lilla
Braybourne.

To her she related her adventures among the medicos, adding:

"All is serene!  There's nothing the matter with Mrs. Morrison of
Carsphairn!  She's in excellent health and may live to be ninety.  Hers
is a first-class life!"

"Bernie predicted it," said the wife of the humble insurance agent of
Hammersmith.  "You were passed fit in the Fitzgerald affair--you
recollect."

"Yes," snapped the handsome woman.  "What a pity the sum wasn't five
thousand instead of five hundred."

"I agree.  But we didn't then realise how easy was the game.  Now we
know--a few preliminary inquiries, a plausible tongue--which, thanks to
Heaven, you've got, Ena--a few smart dresses, and a knowledge of all the
devious ways of insurance and assignments--and the thing is easy."

"Well, as far as we've gone in this matter all goes well--thanks to
Bernie's previous inquiries regarding the good lady of Carsphairn."

"She's a bit of a skinflint, I believe.  Can't keep servants.  She has a
factor who is a very close Scot, and things at Carsphairn are usually in
a perturbed condition," Lilla said.  "Bernie has gone back to Bridge
Place.  What an awful life the poor dear leads!  Fancy having to live
with that deaf old woman Felmore!"

"Yes.  But isn't it part of the game?  By living in Hammersmith, and
being such a hard-working, respectable man, he acquires a lot of very
useful knowledge."

"Quite so; but it must be very miserable there for him."

"He doesn't mind it, he says," was the reply. "It brings money."

"It certainly does that," said Lilla.  "When shall you go north?  Will
you wait till the policy is issued?"

"I think not.  The sooner I meet Mrs. Morrison the better.  Don't you
agree?"

"Certainly.  What does Bernie say?"

"That's his view," answered Ena.  "So I shall go to Scotland at the end
of the week.  I shall stay at the Central, in Glasgow, for a night or
two, and then on to Loch Lomond."

"Bernie has heard from one of his secret sources of information that the
widow is leaving Carsphairn three days earlier than she intended.  She
goes to visit a niece who lives in Crieff, and then on to Ardlui."

"I've been to Ardlui before--on a day trip from Glasgow up the Loch,"
Ena said.  "A quiet, remote little place, with an excellent hotel right
at the extreme end of the Loch, beyond Inversnaid."

"Then you'll go north without waiting for the policy?"

"Yes.  Letters will come to me addressed care of myself, and Bernie will
send them on.  As soon as I have notice that the company will accept me,
I'll pay the premium.  I've already opened a little account in the name
of Augusta Morrison, so that I can send them a cheque.  In the
meanwhile, we need lose no time."

"And yet I don't think we ought to rush it unduly, do you?" asked Lilla.

"Oh! we shan't do that, my dear Lilla.  There's a lot to be done in the
matter of inspiring confidence. Perhaps dear Augusta will not take to
me.  What then?"

"You always know how to make yourself pleasant, Ena.  She'll take to
you, never fear!"

"According to the reports we've had about her, she's rather
discriminating in her friendships," said the handsome woman, smiling
grimly.

"Well, I rather wish I were coming with you for a fortnight on Loch
Lomond," said Lilla.

"No, my dear, you have no place in the picture at present.  Much as I
would like your companionship, you are far better here at home."

"Yes, I suppose you are right!" answered her friend, sighing.  "But I
long for Scotland in these warm summer days."

"Get Bernie to take you to the seaside for a bit. There's nothing urgent
doing just now."

"Bernie is far too busy in Hammersmith, my dear," Lilla laughed.  "He
wouldn't miss his weekly round for worlds.  Besides, he's got some
important church work on--helping the vicar in a series of mission
meetings."

"Bernie is a good Churchman, I've heard," said Ena.

"Of course.  That, too, is part of the big bluff. The man who carries
round the bag every Sunday is always regarded as pious and upright.  And
Bernie never loses a chance to increase his halo of respectability."

Ena remained at Pont Street for about half an hour longer, and then,
returning to her own flat, she set about sorting out the dresses she
would require for Scotland, and assisted her elderly maid to pack them.

Afterwards she returned into her elegant little drawing-room and seated
herself at the little writing-table, where she consulted a diary.  Then
she wrote telegrams to the hotels at Glasgow and at Ardlui, engaging
rooms for dates which, after reflection, she decided upon.

Ena Pollen was a woman of determination and method.  Her exterior was
that of a butterfly of fashion, careless of everything save her dress
and her hair, yet beneath the surface she was calm, clever, and
unscrupulous, a woman who had never loved, and who, indeed, held the
opposite sex in supreme contempt.  The adventure in which she was at
that moment engaged was the most daring she had ever undertaken.  The
unholy trio had dabbled in small affairs, each of which had brought them
profit, but the present undertaking would, she knew, require all her
tact and cunning.

The real Mrs. Augusta Morrison, the widow of Carsphairn, was one of
Boyne's discoveries, and by judicious inquiry, combined with other
investigations which Ena herself had made, they knew practically
everything concerning her, her friends, and her movements.  The
preliminaries had taken fully three months, for prior to going to
Llandudno, there to assume the widow's identity, Ena had been in secret
to New Galloway, and while staying at the Lochinvar Arms, at Dairy, she
had been able to gather many facts concerning the rich widow of
Carsphairn, a copy of whose birth and marriage-certificate she had
obtained from Somerset House.

After writing the telegrams, she took a sheet of notepaper and wrote to
Mr. Emery in Manchester, telling him that she had passed both doctors,
and asking him to hurry forward the policy.


"_My movements during the next fortnight or so are a little uncertain,"
she wrote, "but please always address me as above, care of my friend,
Mrs. Pollen. Please give my best regards to your dear wife, and accept
the same yourself .--Yours very sincerely,_ AUGUSTA MORRISON."


Three nights later, Ena left Euston in the sleeping-car for Glasgow,
arriving early next morning, and for a couple of days idled away the
time in the great hotel, the Central, eagerly awaiting a telegram.

At last it came.

The porter handed it to her as she returned from a walk.  She tore it
open, and when she read its contents, she went instantly pale.

The message was disconcerting, for instead of giving information
regarding the movements of the woman she had been impersonating, it
read:


"_Remain in Glasgow.  Am leaving to-night. Will be with you in morning.
Urgent_.--BERNARD."


What could have happened?  A hitch had apparently occurred in the
arrangements, which had been so thoroughly discussed and every detail
considered.

It was then six o'clock in the evening.  Boyne could not be there until
eight o'clock on the following morning.  She glanced bewildered around
the busy hall of the hotel, where men and women with piles of luggage
were constantly arriving and departing.

"Why is he not more explicit?" she asked herself in apprehension.

What could have happened? she wondered.  For yet another fourteen hours
she must remain in suspense.

Suddenly, however, she recollected that she could telephone to Lilla,
and she put through a call without delay.

Half an hour later she spoke to her friend over the wire, inquiring the
reason of Boyne's journey north.

"My dear, I'm sorry," replied Lilla in her high-pitched voice, "but I
really cannot tell you over the 'phone.  It is some very important
business he wants to see you about."

"But am I not to go to Ardlui?" asked Ena.

"I don't know.  Bernie wants to see you without delay--that's all."

"But has anything happened?" she demanded eagerly.

"Yes--something--but I can't tell you now. Bernie will explain.  He'll
be with you in Glasgow early to-morrow morning."

"Is it anything very serious?"

"_I think it may be--very!_" was Lilla's reply; and at that moment the
operator cut off communication with London, the six minutes allowed
having expired.




                              *CHAPTER V*

                       *CONTAINS A NOTE OF ALARM*


Ena Pollen was on the platform when the dusty night express from London
ran slowly into the Caledonian Station, at Glasgow.

Bernard Boyne, erect and smartly-dressed, stepped out quickly from the
sleeping-car, to be greeted by her almost immediately.

"What's happened?" she demanded anxiously beneath her breath.

"I can't tell you here, Ena.  Wait till we're in the hotel," he replied.
She saw by his countenance that something was amiss.

Together they walked from the platform into the hotel, and having
ascended in the lift to her private sitting-room, the man flung himself
into a chair, and said:

"A very perilous situation has arisen regarding the Martin affair!"

"The Martin affair!" she gasped, instantly pale to the lips.  "I always
feared it.  That girl, Celine Tenot, had some suspicion, I believe."

"Exactly.  She was your maid, and you parted bad friends.  It was
injudicious."

"Where is she now, I wonder?"

"At her home in Melun, near Paris.  You must go at once to Paris, and
ask her to meet you," Boyne said.

"To Paris?" she cried in dismay.

"Yes; not a second must be lost.  Inquiries are on foot.  I discovered
the situation yesterday, quite by accident."

"Inquiries!" she cried.  "Who can be making inquiries?"

"Some friend of that girl--a Frenchman.  He has come over here to find
me."

"To find you!  But she only knew you under the name of Bennett!"

"Exactly.  In that is our salvation," he said, with a grin.  "But the
affair is distinctly serious unless we can make peace with Celine, and
at the same time make it worth her while to withdraw this inquiry. No
doubt she's looking forward to a big reward for furnishing information."

"But why can't we give her the reward--eh?" asked the shrewd, red-haired
woman quickly.

"That's exactly my argument.  That is why you must leave this present
little matter, turn back to Celine, and make it right with her."

"How much do you think it will cost?"

Bernard Boyne shrugged his shoulders.

"Whatever it is, we must pay," he replied.  "We can't afford for this
girl to remain an enemy--and yours especially."

"Of course not," Ena agreed.  "What is her address?"

Boyne took a slip of paper from his pocket-book and handed it to the
handsome woman.

"But what excuse can I possibly make for approaching her?" she asked
bewildered.

"Pretend you've come to Paris to offer to take her into your service
again," Boyne suggested.  "She will then meet you, and you can express
regret that you sent her away so suddenly, and offer to make
reparation--and all that."

"There was an object in sending her away so peremptorily.  You know what
it was, Bernie."

"I know, of course.  She might have discovered something then.  You
adopted the only course--but, unfortunately, it has turned out to have
been a most injudicious one, which may, if we are not very careful and
don't act at once, lead to the exposure of a very nasty
circumstance--the affair of old Martin."

"I quite see," she said.  "I'll go to Paris without delay."

"You'll stay at the Bristol, as before, I suppose?"

"Yes.  I will ask her to come and see me there."

Boyne hesitated.

"No.  I don't know whether it would not be better for you to go out to
Melun for the day and find her there," he queried.  "Remember, you must
handle the affair with the greatest delicacy.  You've practically got to
pay her for blackmail which she has not sought."

"That's the difficulty.  And the sum must be equal, if not more, to that
which she and her French friend who has come over here to seek and
identify you hope to get out of it by their disclosures. Oh! yes," she
said, "I quite see it all."

"I admit that the situation which has arisen is full of peril, Ena,"
remarked the man seated before her, "but you are a clever woman, and
with the exercise of tact and cunning, in addition to the disbursement
of funds, we shall undoubtedly be able to wriggle out--as we always do."

"Let's hope so," she said, with a sigh.  "But what about Ardlui and Mrs.
Morrison?"

"Your visit to Paris is more important at the moment.  You must lose no
time in getting there. Before I left London, I instructed my bank to
send five thousand pounds to you at the head office of the Credit
Lyonnais.  You will be able to draw at once when you get there, and it
will give you time to get more money if you deem it wise to pay any
bigger sum."

"Really, you leave nothing undone, Bernie.

"Not when danger arises, my dear Ena," he laughed.  "In the meantime,
I'll have to remain very low.  That infernal Frenchman may be watching
Lilla with the idea that I might visit Pont Street. But I shan't go near
her again till the danger is past."

"Then I'd better get away as soon as possible," she said.  "I can be in
London this evening, and cross to Paris by the night mail."

"Yes," he replied.  "Don't waste an instant in getting in touch with
her.  Have a rest in Paris, and then go to Melun.  You can be there
to-morrow afternoon."

"Shall you go back to London with me?"

"No.  Better not be seen together," he said. "Let us be discreet.  You
can go by the ten o'clock express, which will just give you time to
cross London to Victoria and catch the boat train, and I'll leave by the
next express, which goes at one. The less we are together at present the
better."

"I agree entirely," Ena said, with a sigh.  "But this affair will, I
see, be very difficult to adjust."

"Not if you keep your wits about you, Ena," he assured her.  "It isn't
half so difficult as the arrangements you made with that pious old
fellow Fleming. Don't you recollect how very near the wind we were all
sailing, and yet you took him in hand and convinced him of your
innocence."

"I was dealing with a man then," she remarked. "Now I have to deal with
a shrewd girl.  Besides, we don't know who this inquisitive Frenchman
may be."

"You'll soon discover all about him, no doubt. Just put on your
thinking-cap on the way over to Paris, and doubtless before you arrive,
you'll hit upon some plan which will be just as successful as the
attitude you adopted towards old Daniel Fleming."  Then he added: "I
wish you'd order breakfast to be served up here, for I'm ravenously
hungry."

She rose, rang the bell, and ordered breakfast for two.

While it was being prepared, Boyne went along the corridor to wash,
while Ena retired to her room, and packed her trunk ready for her
departure south at ten o'clock.

Afterwards she saw the head porter and got him to secure her a place on
the train, and also in the restaurant-car, which is usually crowded.

They breakfasted _tete-a-tete_, after which she paid her bill, and at
ten o'clock left him standing upon the platform to idle away three hours
wandering about the crowded Glasgow streets before his departure at one
o'clock.

Next morning Ena Pollen took her dejeuner at half-past eleven in the
elegant table d'hote room of the aristocratic Hotel Bristol, in Paris, a
big white salon which overlooks the Place Vendome.  Afterwards she took
a taxi to the Gare de Lyon, whence she travelled to Melun, thirty miles
distant--that town from which come the Brie cheeses.  On arrival, she
inquired for the Boulevard Victor Hugo, and an open cab drove her away
across the little island in the Seine, past the old church of St.
Aspais, to a point where, in the boulevard, stood a monument to the
great savant, Pasteur.  The cab pulled up opposite the monument, where,
alighting, Ena found herself before a large four-storied house, the
ground floor of which was occupied by a tobacconist and a shop which
sold comestibles.

Of the old bespectacled concierge who was cobbling boots in the entrance
she inquired for Madame Tenot, and his gruff reply was:

"Au troisieme, a gauche."

So, mounting the stone steps, she found the left-hand door on the third
floor, and rang the bell.

The door opened, and the good-looking young French girl, who had been
her maid for six months at Brighton, confronted her.

"Well, Celine!" exclaimed Ena merrily in French.  "You didn't expect to
see me--did you?"

The girl stood aghast and open-mouthed.

"_Dieu_!  Madame!" she gasped.  "I--I certainly did not!"

"Well, I chanced to be passing through Melun, and I thought I would call
upon you."

The girl stood in the doorway, apparently disinclined to invite her late
mistress into the small flat which she and her mother, the widow of the
local postmaster, occupied.

"I wrote to you, Madame, two months ago--but you never replied!"

"I have never had any letter from you, Celine," Ena declared.  "But may
I not come in for a moment to have a chat with you?  Ah! but perhaps you
have visitors?"

"No, Madame," was her reply; "I am alone.  My mother went to my aunt's,
at Provins, this morning."

"Good!  Then I may come in?"

"If Madame wishes," she said, still with some reluctance, and led the
way to a small, rather sparsely-furnished salon, which overlooked the
cobbled street below.

"I have been staying a few days at Marlotte, and am now on my way back
to Paris," said her former mistress, seating herself in a chair.
"Besides, I wanted particularly to see you, Celine, for several reasons.
I feel somehow that--well, that I have not treated you as I really ought
to have done.  I dismissed you abruptly after poor Mr. Martin's death.
But I was so very upset--I was not actually myself. I know I ought not
to have done what I did.  Please forgive me."

The dark-haired, good-looking young girl in well-cut black skirt and
cotton blouse merely shrugged her well-shaped shoulders.  She uttered no
word. Indeed, she had not yet recovered from her surprise at the sudden
appearance of her former mistress.

"I don't know what you must have thought of me, Celine," Ena added.

"I thought many things of Madame," the girl admitted.

"Naturally.  You must have thought me most ungrateful, after all the
services you had rendered me, often without reward," remarked the
red-haired widow.  "But I assure you that I am not ungrateful."

The girl only smiled.  She recollected the manner in which she had been
suddenly dismissed and sent out from the house at five minutes'
notice--and for no fault that she could discover.

She recollected how Madame had two friends, an old man named Martin, and
a younger one named Bennett.  Mr. Martin, who was a wealthy bachelor,
living in Chiswick, had suddenly contracted typhoid and died.  Madame,
who had been most grief-stricken, received a visit from Bennett next
day, and she had overheard the pair in conversation in the drawing-room.
That conversation had been of a most curious character, but its true
import had never occurred to her at the time.  Next day her mistress had
summarily dismissed her, giving her a month's wages, and requesting her
to leave instantly.  This she had done, and returned to her home in
France.

It was not until nearly two months later that she realised the grim
truth.  The strange words of Mr. Bennett, as she recollected them,
utterly staggered her.

And now this woman's sudden appearance had filled her with curiosity.

"Your action in sending me away in the manner you did certainly did not
betray any sense of gratitude, Madame," the girl said quite coolly.

"No, no, Celine!  Do forgive me," she urged. "Poor Mr. Martin was a very
old friend, and his death greatly perturbed me."

Celine, however, remembered how to the man Bennett she had in confidence
expressed the greatest satisfaction that the old man had died.

Ena was, of course, entirely ignorant of how much of that conversation
the girl had overheard or understood.  Indeed, she had not been quite
certain it the girl had heard anything.  She had dismissed her for quite
another reason--in order that, if inquiries were made, a friendship
between Bernard Boyne and the dead man could not be established. Celine
was the only person aware of it, hence she constituted a grave danger.

Ena used all her charm and her powers of persuasion over the girl, and
as she sat chatting with her, she recalled many incidents while the girl
was in her service.

"Now look here, Celine," she said at last.  "I'll be perfectly frank
with you.  I've come to ask you if you'll let bygones be bygones, and
return to me?"

The girl, much surprised at the offer, hesitated for a moment, and then
replied:

"I regret, Madame, it is quite impossible.  I cannot return to London."

That was exactly the reply for which the clever woman wished.

"Why not, pray?" she asked the girl in a tone of regret.

"Because the man to whom I am betrothed would not allow me," was her
reply.

"Oh!  Then you are engaged, Celine!  Happy girl!  I congratulate you
most heartily.  And who is the happy man?"

"Henri Galtier."

"And what is his profession?"

"He is employed in the Mairie, at Chantilly," was her reply.

"He is at Chantilly now?"

The girl again hesitated.  Then she replied:

"No--he is in London."

Ena held her breath.  It was evidently the man to whom Celine was
engaged who was in London in search of Richard Bennett.  Next second she
recovered from her excitement at her success in making the discovery.

"In London?  Is he employed there?"

"Yes--temporarily," she answered.

"And when are you to marry?"

"In December--we hope."

"Ah!  Then, much as I regret it, I quite understand that you cannot
return to me, Celine," exclaimed Ena.  "Does Monsieur Galtier speak
English?"

"Yes; very well, Madame.  He was born in London, and lived there until
he was eighteen."

"Oh, well, of course he would speak our language excellently.  But
though you will no doubt both be happy in the near future, I myself am
not at all satisfied with my own conduct towards you.  I've treated you
badly; I feel that in some way or other I ought to put myself right with
you.  I never like a servant to speak badly of me."

"I do not speak badly of Madame," responded the girl, wondering whether,
after all, her late mistress suspected her of overhearing that startling
conversation late on the night following Mr. Martin's death.

Ena hesitated a moment, and then determined to act boldly, and said:

"Now Celine, let us be quite frank.  I happen know that you have said
some very nasty and things about me--wicked things, indeed.  I heard
that you have made a very serious allegation against me, and----"

"But, Madame!  I----!" cried the girl, interrupting.

"Now you cannot deny it, Celine.  You have said those things because you
have sadly misjudged me. But I know it is my own fault, and the reason I
am here in Melun is to put matters right--and to show you that I bear
you no ill will."

"I know that, Madame," she said.  "Your words are sufficient proof of
it."

"But, on the contrary, you are antagonistic--bitterly antagonistic
towards myself--and"--she added slowly, looking straight into the girl's
face--"and also towards Mr. Bennett."

She started, looking sharply at the red-haired widow.

"Yes, I repeat it, Celine!" Ena went on.  "You see I know the truth!
Yet your feeling against Mr. Bennett does not matter to him in the
least, because he died a month ago--of influenza."

"Mr. Bennett dead!" echoed the girl, standing aghast, for, as a matter
of fact, her lover, Henri Galtier, was searching for him in London.

"Yes; the poor fellow went to Birmingham on business, took influenza,
and died there a week later. Is it not sad?"

"Very," the girl agreed, staring straight before her.  If Bennett were
dead, then of what avail would be all her efforts to probe the mystery
of Mr. Martin's death?

"Mr. Bennett was always generous to you--was he not?" asked Ena.

"Always," replied the girl.  "I am very sorry he is dead!"

"Well, he is, and therefore whatever hatred you may have conceived for
him is of no importance," she replied; and then adroitly turned the
conversation to another subject.

At length, however, she returned to Celine's approaching marriage,
expressing a hope that she would be very comfortably off.

"Has Monsieur Galtier money?"

"Not very much," she replied.  "But we shall be quite happy
nevertheless."

"Of course.  Money does not always mean happiness.  I am glad you view
matters in that light, Celine," Ena said.  "Yet, on the other hand,
money contributes to luxury, and luxury, in most cases, means
happiness."

"True, Madame, I believe so," replied the ex-maid, whose thoughts were,
however, filled by what her late mistress had, apparently in all
innocence, told her, namely, that Bennett, the man her lover meant to
hunt down, was dead.  She had no reason to doubt what Mrs. Pollen had
said, for only on the previous day Henri had written her to say that his
inquiries had had no result, and that he believed that the man Bennett
must be dead, as he could obtain no trace of him.  The reward which they
hoped to gain from the insurance company when they had established
Bennett's identity had therefore vanished into air.

Celine Tenot sat bewildered and disappointed, and the clever woman
seated with her read her thoughts as she would have read a book.

"Now let's come to the point," she said, after a pause.  "I want to make
amends, Celine.  I want you to think better of me, and for that purpose,
I want to render you some little service, now that you are to marry.  My
desire is to remove from your mind any antagonism you may entertain
towards myself.  The best way in which I can do that is to make you a
little wedding-present--something useful."

"Oh, Madame!" she cried.  "I--I really want nothing!"

"But I insist, Celine!" replied the wealthy widow.  "Poor Mr. Bennett
remarked that I was very harsh in dismissing you.  At the time I did not
think so, but I now realise that the fault was on my side, therefore I
shall give you thirty thousand francs to put by as a little nest-egg."

"But, Madame, I could not really accept it!" declared the girl,
exhibiting her palms.

"I have an account at the Credit Lyonnais, and to-morrow I shall place
the thirty thousand francs there in your name," said Mrs. Pollen.  "I
shall want you to come to Paris--to the Hotel Bristol--so that we can go
to the bank together, and you can there open an account and give them
your signature.  If I were you, I would say nothing whatever to Monsieur
Galtier about it--or even tell him of my visit. Just keep the money for
yourself--as a little present from one who, after all, greatly valued
your services."

Though the girl pretended to be entirely against receiving any present,
yet she realised that possession of such a respectable sum would be able
to assist in preparing her new home.  After all, it was most generous of
Madame.  Yes! she had sadly misjudged her, she reflected, after Mrs.
Pollen had left. So, adopting her late mistress's suggestion, she
refrained from telling her mother of the unexpected visit.

That night she wrote to Galtier, who was staying in a boarding-house in
Bloomsbury, telling him that she had heard of the death of Bennett, but
not revealing the source of her information.  She therefore suggested
that he should spend no further time or money on the inquiry, but return
at once to his duties at Chantilly.

Next day Celine called at the Hotel Bristol, when mistress and maid went
together to the bank in the Boulevard des Italians, and there the girl
received the handsome present.  After this, she returned much gratified
to Melun, while her late mistress left Paris that same night for London.

She had cleverly gained the girl's complete confidence, thereby
preventing any further inquiry into the curious circumstances attending
the death of Mr. Martin, of Chiswick.




                              *CHAPTER VI*

                    *THE LOCKED ROOM IN HAMMERSMITH*


"I'll go in first, and see if Mr. Boyne is at home," said Marigold
Ramsay excitedly to her companion, Gerald Durrant, as they turned into
Bridge Place, Hammersmith, about half-past nine one night ten days
later.

"Yes.  If he's there I won't come in.  We'll wait till another evening,"
the young fellow said.

"If he's out, I shall tell auntie that you are here, and ask whether I
can bring you in," said the girl, and leaving him idling at the corner,
she hurried to the house, and went down the basement steps.

What Marigold had told Durrant had aroused his curiosity concerning the
occupier of that creeper-covered house, and after much deliberation, he
had, after his return from Newcastle, decided to make an investigation.
Certainly the exterior of the place presented nothing unusual, for the
house was exactly the same as its neighbours, save for the dusty creeper
which hung untrimmed around the windows.  Yet the fact that the man who
lived there disguised himself when he went to a locked attic was
certainly mysterious.

After a few moments, the girl emerged, and hastening towards him, said
eagerly:

"It's all right.  Mr. Boyne is not expected home before half-past ten.
I'll introduce you to my aunt, and before she goes to bed--as she always
does at ten--I'll manage to unbolt the basement door.  Then we'll go
out, and return without her being any the wiser."

"Excellent!" he replied, as they walked to the front door which Marigold
had left ajar.

In the hall Mrs. Felmore met them fussily.

"Very pleased to know you, Mr. Durrant," declared the deaf old lady
without, of course, having heard Gerald's greeting as he shook her hand.

"My aunt is very deaf," the girl said.  "She can read what I say by my
lips, but it will be useless for you to try and converse with her.  Mr.
Boyne can just manage to do so."

"Then I'll do the same," said Gerald, glancing around the front parlour,
into which Mrs. Felmore had then ushered them.

He noted the cheapness of the furniture, combined with scrupulous
cleanliness, as Mrs. Felmore, turning to him, said in that loud voice in
which the deaf usually converse:

"I hope you'll make yourself at home, Mr. Durrant! Any friend of my
niece is welcome here. Would you like a cup of tea?  I know Marigold
will have one."

He thanked her, and she went below to prepare it, leaving the pair in
Mr. Boyne's room.

Quickly Gerald rose, remarking:

"There's nothing very curious about this, is there?"  He made a critical
tour of the apartment.

He noticed the cupboards on either side of the fireplace, and on trying
the handle of one, found it locked.

"He keeps his insurance papers in there," said his companion in a low
voice.

"What?  More insurance papers!  I thought he kept them in the locked
room upstairs!" exclaimed Durrant.

"So he does, but there are some others here," she said.  "This cupboard
is open.  He keeps Nibby here."

"Nibby--who's that?"

"Here he is!" replied the girl, opening the door and taking out the cage
containing the tame rat.

"Is that his pet?" asked the young man, bending to examine the little
animal, whose beady eyes regarded him with considerable apprehension.

"Yes.  Nibby always feeds off his master's plate after he has finished.
A sweet little thing, isn't he?"

Durrant agreed, but the possession of such a pet showed him that Boyne
was a man of some eccentricity.

"Would you like to see the door of the locked room?" Marigold asked.
"If so, I'll go downstairs and keep my aunt there while you run up to
the top floor."

"Excellent!  I've brought my electric torch with me."

So while Marigold descended to the kitchen to talk to her aunt and help
to prepare the cup of tea, young Durrant switched on his light and
rushed up the stairs, half fearing lest the front door should suddenly
open and Boyne appear.

Arrived at the top of the stairs, he was confronted by the door which
led into the attic, a stout one of oak, he noted.  The doors of all the
other rooms were of deal, painted and grained.  This, however, was
heavy, and of oiled oak.

After careful examination, he came to the conclusion that the particular
door was much more modern than the others, and the circular brass
keyhole of the Yale latch gave it the appearance of the front door of a
house, rather than that of a room.

Some strange secret, no doubt, lay behind that locked door.

If it had an occupant he would, in all probability, have a light,
therefore he switched off his torch and tried to discover any ray of
light shining through a crack.

Carefully he went around the whole door, until he drew away the mat
before it, when, sure enough, _a light showed from within_!

With bated breath he listened.  He could, however, distinguish no sound,
even though he placed his ear to the floor.  Then, raising himself, much
gratified at his discovery, but nevertheless increasingly puzzled, he
recollected that the occupant, whoever he might be, would no doubt have
heard his footsteps and was now remaining quiet, little dreaming that
his light had betrayed his presence.

Suddenly, as he stood there straining his ears, he heard the sound of
low ticking--the ticking of a clock.  Again he bent his ear to the
bottom of the door, and then at once established the fact that the clock
was inside that locked room.

He heard Marigold coming up from below, and at once slipped down again,
meeting her in the hall. When within the sitting-room, he said to her in
a low, tense voice:

"There's somebody in that room!  There's a light there!"

"Your first surmise is correct then, Gerald!" she exclaimed.  "Who can
it possibly be?"

"Ah! that we have to discover!" he said. "Let's be patient.  I wonder,
however, who can be living up there in secret.  At any rate, he has both
light and the time of day.  In this weather he only wants food and
water."

"But it's extraordinary that somebody should live here without my aunt's
knowledge."

"It is.  But there are dozens of people hidden away in London--people
believed by their friends to be dead, or abroad," he said.  "In a great
city like ours it is quite easy to hide, providing that one is concealed
by a trusty friend.  I wonder," he added, "how many people whose
obituary notices have appeared in the papers are living in secret in
upstairs rooms or down in cellars, dragging out their lives in
self-imprisonment, yet buoyed by the hope that one day they may, when
changed in appearance by years, reappear among their fellow-men and
laugh up their sleeves because nobody recognises them."

"Really, do you honestly think that Mr. Boyne is concealing somebody
here?" asked the girl anxiously.

"Everything points to it--a light in the room, and a clock."

"But why should he pay visits to him in disguise?"

"Ah!  That's quite another matter.  We have yet to discover the motive.
And we can only do so by watching vigilantly."

Then he described to her how he had pulled away the mat from before the
door, and how the light had been revealed.

"Well," exclaimed the girl.  "I'm greatly puzzled over the whole affair.
May I not be frank with auntie, and tell her what we suspect?"

"By no means," he answered.  "It would be most injudicious.  It would
only alarm her, and upset any plans we may make."

"I wonder who can really be up there?"

"Some very close friend of this Mr. Boyne, without a doubt.  He must
have some strange motive for concealing him."

"But if he's a friend, why does he disguise himself when he visits him?"
queried the girl.

"Yes, that's just the point.  There's something very curious about the
whole affair," declared the young man.  "When your aunt is in bed, he
goes up, evidently to take his friend food and drink.  And yet he puts
on a gown which makes him look--as you have described it--like a Spanish
Inquisitor."

"Only all in white.  Why white?"

"Can it be that the person upstairs is not self-imprisoned?" suggested
the young man, as a sudden thought occurred to him.  "Can it be that
whoever is confined there is without proper mental balance? Solitary
confinement produces madness, remember. In Italy, where solitary
confinement for life takes the place of capital punishment for murder,
the criminal always ends his days as a lunatic--driven mad by that
terrible loneliness which even a dog could not suffer."

"That's certainly quite another point of view," she remarked.  "I hadn't
thought of that!"

"Well, it is one to bear in mind," he said.  "Your aunt, a most worthy
lady, is devoted to Mr. Boyne and serves him well.  For the present let
her hold him in high esteem.  In the meantime we will watch, and
endeavour to solve this mystery, Marigold."

Hardly had the words left his mouth, when the old lady entered the room
with two cups of tea upon a brass tray.

"There!" she said, addressing Marigold.  "I know you like a cup o' tea
at this hour of the evening, and I hope, Mr. Durrant, it will be to your
liking.  Mr. Boyne often has a cup out of my teapot if he gets home
before I go to bed."

"It's awfully good of you, auntie," the girl declared.  "I know Mr.
Durrant highly appreciates it."

"That's all right," laughed the old lady.  "I'll soon be going to bed.
It's near ten o'clock now."

Gerald glanced at his wrist-watch and saw that it was just ten.

Then, when Mrs. Felmore had gone, he said to the girl:

"Hadn't we better be going?  Boyne will be back soon."

"Right," she said, drinking her tea daintily. "I'll go down and unfasten
the basement door. Auntie has no doubt bolted it.  Then, when she's gone
to bed, we can get in again."

And a few moments later she left him. Five minutes later she reappeared,
followed by Mrs. Felmore.

"Auntie is going to bed," she said.  "We must be off, Gerald."

The young man rose, smiled pleasantly, and shook the deaf woman's hand
in farewell.  Then, a few moments later, the young pair descended the
front steps and left the house.

About ten minutes later, however, they returned to it, slipping
unobserved down the area steps. Marigold turned the handle of the door,
and in the darkness they both entered the kitchen, where they waited
eagerly, without lighting the gas, and conversing only in whispers.
Mrs. Felmore had gone upstairs, and stone-deaf that she was, would hear
no noise below.

She had left the gas turned low in the hall in readiness for her
master's return, retiring fully satisfied with the appearance and
manners of the young man to whom her niece had that night introduced
her.

The pair, waiting below in the darkness, remained eagerly on the alert.

It was a quarter past ten, and Bernard Boyne might return at any time.
But each minute which passed seemed an hour, so anxious and puzzled were
they, and at every noise they held their breath and waited.

At last footsteps sounded outside--somebody ascending the stone steps
above--and next second there was a click as a key was put into the latch
of the front door.

"Here he is--at last!" the girl whispered. "Now we'll watch!"

They watched together--and by doing so learned some very strange facts.




                             *CHAPTER VII*

                    *WHAT HAPPENED IN BRIDGE PLACE*


Together Marigold and her lover crept up the kitchen stairs in the
darkness, and heard Mr. Boyne moving about in the front parlour.

They heard him yawn as he threw off his coat, for the night was sultry,
and there were sounds which showed that he was eating his evening meal.
They heard the loud fizzing as he unscrewed a bottle of beer, and the
noise of a knife and fork upon the plate, for he had left the door open.

After about ten minutes, for he seemed to eat his supper hurriedly, he
flung off his boots, and in his socks crept upstairs to Mrs. Felmore's
door, apparently to satisfy himself that she had retired.

"Hadn't we better get down," suggested Durrant, in a low whisper.  "He
may take it into his head to come down and search here."

"No, he never comes into the kitchen.  So long as auntie has gone to bed
he does not mind.  Let's wait and watch."

This they did.  After a few moments Mr. Boyne came down again and walked
along the narrow passage back to his room, satisfied that all was quiet.

He had removed his boots, apparently for some other purpose than to be
able to move about in silence, for however heavily he trod his old
housekeeper would not hear him.  Perhaps, however, he feared that her
sense of feeling had been so highly developed that she might have
detected the vibration caused by his footsteps.

He remained for nearly a quarter of an hour in his room, while the pair
stood breathless in the darkness.

"This is just what happened when I last watched," the girl whispered
into the ear of the young man who held her arm affectionately in the
darkness.

"I wonder when he'll come out," remarked young Durrant, highly excited
over the curious adventure. That something remarkable was afoot was
proved by the man's action in ascending the stairs to ascertain that his
housekeeper had retired and would not disturb his movements.

At last they heard a soft movement, and next moment, peering over the
banisters, they saw a tall, ghostly form clad from top to toe in a long,
loose white gown advancing to the stairs.

In one hand he carried a glass jug filled with water, and in the other a
plate piled with bread and other food.

"See!" whispered Durrant.  "There is somebody upstairs in that locked
room.  He's carrying food and water to his prisoner!"

"Hush!" the girl said softly, and in excitement. "He may hear you!  He's
very quick!"

But the strange occupant of the house had already ascended out of view,
and a few moments later they heard a click as he put his key into the
Yale lock of the closed room.

They distinctly heard him open the door, and as distinctly heard him
close it again.

"You wait here, Marigold," the young fellow whispered.  "I'll creep up
and see what I can. Perhaps I shall hear them talking."

"Yes, do," she said.  "But take the greatest care. Mind the stairs don't
creak.  He'll be alarmed in a moment."

"Leave that to me," he replied, and next moment he left her side, and
slowly ascending the few remaining steps, gained the hall, and then the
foot of the stairs which led to the first floor.

Though he had not removed his shoes he made no noise, for he trod slowly
and cautiously, never lifting one foot until the other was down
silently. Thus very slowly he followed the mysterious man in white.

Hardly had he ascended four steps when an electric bell sounded,
apparently in the locked room. He halted, and in an instant decided to
retreat. Scarcely before Marigold had realised that the alarm had
sounded, he sprang down, rejoined her, and whispering:

"Quick!  Let's get down!" he descended into the dark kitchen.  There,
clutching her by the arm, he felt his way to the door.

Without pausing to listen to the effect of the alarm upon the man
upstairs, the pair passed out into the area, closed the door after them,
hurried up the steps, and out into the street.

"Let's get away before he sees us!" Gerald urged, and they both ran
light-footed along to the corner into King Street, where they escaped.

"There's a trap in that house!" Durrant declared, as after hurrying
breathlessly they walked along in the direction of the Broadway Station.
"Upon one of those stairs is an electrical contact which gives to the
locked room the alarm of an intruder.  He switched it on from his room
below!"

"Yes!" said the girl.  "I feel sure there is."

"And that shows that there's something very wrong somewhere.  Mr. Boyne
has, in secret, a guest who is in hiding upstairs.  He takes him food
and water every night--as we have seen with our own eyes.  And, further,
he had taken the precaution of installing an electrical alarm in case
anyone followed him upstairs while he was there with his friend."

"True," said the girl.  "But why does he disguise himself whenever he
goes up there?"

"That we cannot yet tell.  At present it is a complete mystery."

"And a most uncanny one!"

"It is, I can't see the motive of that disguise."

"Is it not weird?  He was covered from head to foot in that white cloak,
and only those two slits for his eyes."

"Yes.  And he moved as silently as a shadow."

So the pair conversed until they reached the Broadway Station, and left
by the Underground a few moments later.

What they had witnessed that night had increased the mystery a
hundredfold.

In the meantime Bernard Boyne had been startled by the ringing of the
bell, yet in the full knowledge that Mrs. Felmore could hear nothing.
That secret alarm had, as a matter of fact, been installed with his own
hands about two months before, with its switch concealed in the upstairs
room.

On hearing it, he instantly flung off his white cloak and dashed
headlong down the stairs.

In the hall, however, he halted and burst out laughing.

"Fool you are, Bernard!" he exclaimed aloud to himself.  "Yes, you are
getting more nervous every day!"

The reason of this was because close to the front door sat Mrs.
Felmore's black cat, waiting to be let out for the night.

"Ah, pussy!" he exclaimed.  "So it is you who ran silently down the
stairs and set off the gong, eh?"

And, opening the door, he let out the cat, saying:

"Out you go, Jimmy, and don't do it again."

Then he reascended the stairs to the locked room, perfectly satisfied
with the solution of what a few moments before had caused him very
considerable alarm.

No intruder would be tolerated in that dingy house--the house of great
mystery.

He carried in his hand a small bottle of meat extract which he had taken
from the sideboard in the parlour, and was fully satisfied that it was
the cat who had set off the alarm.

As Gerald and Marigold sat side by side in the train, they could not
converse because of the noise, but at Earl's Court, where they changed,
the girl for Wimbledon Park and her lover bound in the opposite
direction, Marigold halted on the platform, and said:

"I feel worried about auntie, Gerald.  There's something wrong in that
house.  Don't you think so?"

"Frankly, I do," was the young man's reply. "That he sets an alarm when
he visits the mysterious person concealed in that locked room is in
itself a most remarkable feature of the affair, which is one we must
certainly probe to the bottom."

"But Mr. Boyne is such a nice man.  Everyone speaks so well of him.  In
all Hammersmith I don't think he has a single enemy, save those who are
jealous of his local popularity.  And there are always such."

"As I've said before, Marigold, the men who are deep schemers always
take care to establish a high reputation locally.  This Mr. Boyne has,
no doubt, done so with some ulterior motive."

"And that motive we mean to find out," said the girl decisively.

"We will," he said, in a hard voice.  "I feel confident that we are on
the track of some very sensational affair."

"Who can be the person who is hiding?"

"Ah! that remains to be seen.  It is evidently someone who dare not show
his face--not only in the light of day, but even at night."

"But why does Mr. Boyne wear that hideous robe with slits for the eyes?"
asked Marigold, bewildered, as they walked to the stairs.

"At present, I can't imagine.  But we shall know the truth very soon,
never fear," the young man replied.  And then, lifting his hat politely,
he shook her hand, and they parted after a very adventurous evening.

As Gerald Durrant travelled back to his home, he reflected deeply upon
the whole affair.  Though he had not dared to mention the fact to
Marigold, he was more deeply in love with her than ever.  She was the
most dainty and most beautiful girl he had ever met.  She was chic to
the finger-tips, and among the many girl clerks he met daily she was
outstanding on account of her refinement, her modesty, and the sweet
expression always upon her countenance.

Yet the problem which she had put forward to him was certainly an
inscrutable one.  Boyne, the highly respectable, hard-working insurance
agent, lived in that dingy and rather stuffy house surrounded by meagre
comfort which, in itself, betokened modest means.  For every penny
Bernard Boyne gained he worked very hard.  Insurance agency is not
highly-paid, for everything is nowadays cut to a minimum, while since
the war the cost of living has soared.

Nevertheless, as he sat in the train taking him westward, he examined
the facts.  Boyne employed as housekeeper a woman who was stone-deaf.
Why? Was it because the person confined behind that stout door upstairs
sometimes shouted and made noises which would have attracted the
attention of any person who possessed the sense of hearing?

That this was so he was convinced.  Had it not been proved by Boyne
carrying food to the mysterious person who was his captive, or who
remained in voluntary concealment?

If the latter, why did he disguise himself each time he paid him a
visit?

No.  Somebody was held there captive against his will, and the reason of
the wearing of that cloak was in order that the captor should remain
unknown and unidentified.  Truly, there was an element of sensationalism
in the whole affair!

He was, however, determined to get to the bottom of it.  Marigold had,
in her perplexity, consulted him, and he had given his aid.  Now, having
witnessed what he had, he meant to carry the affair through, and solve
the mystery of Bernard Boyne and his locked room in Hammersmith.

It occurred to him that perhaps by watching Boyne's movements he might
learn something of interest.  The unfortunate part of it was that in his
position he was engaged all day, and could never have any time to devote
to the affair till six or seven o'clock.  Nevertheless, he had made a
firm resolve to discover the reason of that locked room, and the
identity of the person concealed within.

Supposing the person to be some relative who was insane, or whose
personal appearance was too horrible to be seen in public--and there are
all sorts of human monstrosities living in concealment in London--then
there could be no reason why Boyne should hide his face when visiting
him.  No.  Somebody was held there, a prisoner in solitary confinement.

He recollected the heavy door, and the light beneath.  Did they not tell
their own tale?

"London contains many mysteries of crime," he said to himself as he
alighted at the station and strolled home.  "And here is one, I feel
sure.  Boyne is playing some clever game.  Perhaps he seeks to inherit
property belonging to the person whom he holds in captivity, and whose
death may indeed have been registered!"

Such a case--and more than one--was on record. Cases of people presumed
by the law to be dead, yet they were still alive, held in confinement by
those who benefited by their money.

Durrant, who had read deeply of the mysteries of crime, recollected the
case of Mrs. Marvin, of Hounslow; of George Charles Pepper, of Richmond;
or Doctor Heaton, of Curzon Street; the celebrated case of the sisters
Tredgold, and others, all of whom were concerned in the holding in
bondage of those whose fortunes they secured.

His inclination led him to go direct to Scotland Yard, and reveal what
he had heard and seen, but Marigold had urged him to refrain from doing
so until they had investigated further.  She held Mr. Boyne in such high
esteem, and her aunt held such a comfortable post, that she was most
reluctant to put any suspicions before the police.  It was in accordance
with the girl's wishes that he did not go straight to the Criminal
Investigation Department. Yet he knew too well that the police, who
discover so many "mare's nests" daily, are slow to move until a tragedy
occurs.  And then it is often too late, for the perpetrators of the
crime have vanished, either abroad, or into one or other of the criminal
bolt-holes which are ever open to those who know.

The public never realise that in the great underworld of London there
are people who make a living--and a very good one, too--by successfully
concealing for weeks, months, nay, years, those for whom the emissaries
of Scotland Yard are in search. The clever criminal knows of these
burrows where he can live quite cosily, and surrounded by comforts,
defying all police inquiries until the hue and cry has died down, and
then as a stoker-fireman, or in some menial capacity, he gets abroad a
free man--free to enjoy the proceeds of his crimes.

At first Gerald Durrant had suspected Bernard Boyne to be one of those
obliging persons who offer safe asylum to criminals, but the wearing of
that ghostly cloak by the owner of the house dispelled any such theory.

No.  As he entered the house, after that exciting evening, he was firmly
convinced that Boyne held somebody--man or woman--in captivity.

And he intended, at all hazards, to learn the truth.




                             *CHAPTER VIII*

                            *ON LOCH LOMOND*


A bright brilliant day on glorious Loch Lomond, which, with its wooded
islands, is one of the most picturesque of all the Scottish lakes.

The grey little steamer, which that morning had left Balloch Pier at the
southern end of the loch, was slowly threading its way through the green
islets in the afternoon sunshine.  Crowded as it always is in fine
weather with visitors from the south, all full of admiration as at every
turn there came into view fresh aspects of the woods and mountains
around Ben Lomond, standing high and majestic, Ben Vane, Ben Vorlick,
the twin peaks of Ben Cruachan, and the tent-shaped Ben More.

The silent grandeur of the loch, where in the deep waters, smooth as
glass, the heron fishes undisturbed, is always impressive.  Even on that
unusually clear autumn day--for mists and rains are more often than not
drifting up and down that twenty-five miles or so of picturesque water,
which is sometimes as wide as five miles--those who had come up from
Edinburgh or Glasgow to make the trip, stood open-mouthed at the
ever-changing scene as the steamer wended its way up the loch after
leaving the remote little village of Luss.

Among those on board, seated in a deck-chair and enjoying the beautiful
afternoon, was a well-dressed woman of middle-age, with auburn hair, and
rather sad-faced, but very well preserved.  Once or twice her maid, a
short, stout little Scotchwoman, whose speech was that of a Glaswegian,
came to wait upon her, afterwards retiring to another part of the boat.

The lady's eyes were fixed upon the gorgeous panorama.  Beside her chair
was a well-worn dressing-bag in dark-green cover, which showed that she
was not a mere day traveller, but had come to Loch Lomond to stay at one
of the unpretentious lakeside hotels, of which there are several at
Tarbet and at Inversnaid.  Though she was greatly enjoying the scenery,
it was not in the least fresh to her.  Indeed, Mrs. Morrison, of
Carsphairn, was an annual visitor to Loch Lomond, staying a fortnight
each year at the little hotel at Ardlui, a spot which her late husband
had loved so well.

Though an extremely wealthy man, the summer attractions of Harrogate,
Dinard, Aix, or Ostend, had never appealed to him.  Bluff and hearty, he
loved Loch Lomond in the days of his prosperity just as when, in his
youth, he used to save his coppers to enable him to have a one-day trip
from Glasgow each summer--red-letter days in his otherwise grey workaday
life.

It had, indeed, been in his mind to build a fine summer residence on the
shore of the loch at Ardlui, and he had actually bought the site--one
that gave a magnificent view of Ben Lomond and a wide-reaching expanse
of the lake--when a sudden illness cut him off, and his wife was left to
mourn his loss.

Augusta Morrison was thinking of the last occasion when she and her
devoted husband had come for the annual fortnight at Ardlui, and of how
daily they walked to the site on the mountain-side where their new home
was to be.

That was four years ago.  Yet each year she never failed to pay her
pilgrimage to the spot which they both so loved.

A young couple, evidently Londoners, seated beside her, had been reading
aloud from a guide book the legend of the rocky Craig Royston, where
there is a cave known locally as "Rob Roy's Prison," and then, full of
admiration, had turned to the splendid view afforded of the mountains
around Arrochar.

Just then the steamer slackened, and after some shouting from the
captain, was moored to the pier at Inversnaid, the little loch-side
village with its wooded mountains beyond.  There most of the passengers
left the boat to cross by coach or motor that ridge which lies between
Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, Inversnaid being one of the points of
departure from Loch Lomond to the Trossachs. Therefore, when the boat
went on to the head of the loch at Ardlui, there remained but few
passengers.

At last the steamer drew up at the quaint little landing-stage, the
postal official brought out the last bag of mail for delivery, and, Mrs.
Morrison's maid collecting up all their belongings, they both waited
until the paddles had ceased to revolve.

Scarcely had the widow risen from her chair, when a big, burly Scot
presented himself, and, touching his cap, respectfully bade the lady
welcome.

"Ah! so you're here still, McIntyre!" remarked the widow pleasantly.

"Yes, Mistress Morrison, David McIntyre never leaves Ardlui," laughed
the man, who acted as porter, boots, and general factotum to the
Tillychewan Arms Hotel.

Mistress and maid walked ashore, and were very soon at the little hotel
facing the loch, a very cosy, unpretentious place, where one could get
excellent food, and go mountaineering and fishing to one's heart's
content.

On the threshold Mrs. Morrison was greeted enthusiastically by the
proprietor's wife, a stout, homely woman, and very soon the widow from
Kirkcudbrightshire and her maid were installed in the rooms she annually
occupied, both of which gave magnificent views of water and mountains.

At Ardlui the daily steamer waits for an hour and a half, and then
returns to Balloch, where the express for Glasgow is waiting.
Therefore, when the siren sounded and the boat left on its return
journey, the little place relapsed into its lethargy of rural solitude
and remoteness from the stress of the southern world.

The hotel, half covered with creeper, stood in its well-kept garden,
which ran down to the lake.  It was not quite full of visitors.  The
guests, however, were all of the better class, mostly Glasgow merchants
and their wives, with a couple of families from London, and the usual
youthful, well-dressed idler which one finds in every hotel the world
over.

At dinner, as Mrs. Morrison sat alone in a corner by the window
overlooking the loch, now crimson in the sunset, she glanced around, but
none of her fellow-visitors appeared to be very interesting.  The only
person who attracted her was one woman who, seated alone, was apparently
taking no interest in anyone, for she had propped up before her the
_Glasgow Herald_, which had just arrived by the steamer, and was
absorbed in it.

Augusta Morrison raised her eyes again, and saw that the woman was
exceedingly well, though very quietly, dressed, while there was about
her a distinct air of refinement.  She also noticed that she possessed
very remarkable hair.

Suddenly the eyes of the two women met, and the widow, a little confused
for she had been staring hard, turned to look out of the window.

An hour later, when the well-dressed woman had gone out for an
after-dinner stroll in the direction of the landing-stage, Mrs. Morrison
inquired her name of the proprietor's wife.

"Oh!" replied the other.  "She's a very nice lady from London.  She has
never been up here before.  She's a Mrs. Pollen."

Then, referring to the visitors' book, she added: "She lives in Upper
Brook Street, London.  She came here about four days ago."

"Is she making a long stay?"

"She took her rooms for a fortnight," was the woman's reply.  "She seems
quite nice," she added.

Mrs. Morrison, of Carsphairn, agreed, and then, getting a wrap, went out
into the garden where several of the other visitors were sitting on the
verandah, as the dull red afterglow deepened into twilight.

With one of the women she got into conversation, and, taking the empty
chair next to her, remained there chatting for nearly an hour.  Then,
just as darkness was falling, Mrs. Pollen, in a short skirt and carrying
a little ash walking-stick, re-entered the garden and sank into a seat
in the corner to rest.

Next morning after breakfast--the usual Scotch breakfast with cold
grouse and scones--Mrs. Morrison again strolled out into the sunlit
garden after Mrs. Pollen, and broke the ice.

At first Mrs. Pollen preserved a somewhat dignified attitude.  She spoke
in her best Mayfair manner, and it was apparent that she considered
herself socially superior to the widow, who, by her speech, was so
palpably Scotch.

"No," said Ena, "I have never been in Scotland before.  I find it most
delightful up here, but rather dull when one is alone, as I am."

"I, too, am alone, except for my maid," replied the widow.  "But I love
this place.  It is so quiet and out of the world.  Besides, the scenery
is as grand as any in Scotland.  I'm Scottish, and I've travelled the
whole country through with my husband.  He was always enchanted with
Ardlui. Indeed," she added, "we bought a site for a home out here at the
back--where one has a lovely view--but unfortunately he died before he
gave the order to build the place."

"How very unfortunate," said Ena Pollen, with quick sympathy, and in
pretence that she knew nothing whatever of her fellow-guest's identity,
or of her past, whereas she knew every fact of importance concerning
her.  "I live in London, and though I travel a good deal, mostly on the
Continent or in Egypt, I must say that I think Loch Lomond really
beautiful.  I took a long ramble by the lochside yesterday afternoon,
and found it most enjoyable."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Morrison.  "You must take the trip over to
Stronachlachar and up Katrine.  It is quite pretty, but not so grand as
this.  Besides, there are always too many trippers in the Trossachs.
But while you are here you must really go across and see Ellen's Isle."

And so the pair, seated in the garden with the sunlit waters at their
feet, gossiped on, and quickly became good friends.

That same evening, indeed, Mrs. Morrison invited the lady from London up
to her sitting-room to take coffee after dinner, and there they sat
gossiping and smoking cigarettes until it was time to retire.

When Ena Pollen gained her room she locked the door, and, flinging
herself into a small easy chair, exclaimed beneath her breath:

"Thank Heaven!  That's over!  The first few hours when one cultivates a
friendship are always full of pitfalls.  A word in the wrong place, and
the person one seeks to know may instantly conceive a strong dislike.
In this case, however, the woman has approached me.  It was a good job I
got up here first."

Ena Pollen was much fatigued by the recent rapid journeys to and fro to
Scotland, over to Paris and back, and then north again to Loch Lomond.
She was, however, a cosmopolitan, and had travelled very extensively
ever since she had been left a widow ten years earlier.  Her husband had
been a solicitor, whose practice was in Bedford Row, but after his death
she had embarked upon an adventurous career which had culminated in her
association with Bernard Boyne and his wife.

That association had brought her considerable wealth--sufficient,
indeed, to allow her, through payments from Boyne and his wife, to live
in an expensive flat and indulge in jewellery, furs, smart frocks, and
all that appealed to her natural vanity.

That evening, however, she felt worn out.  The strain of ingratiating
herself with Mrs. Morrison of Carsphairn, whom she found to be an
exceedingly shrewd woman, had been considerable, and this, combined with
the fact that she had taken a long walk that afternoon, had utterly
fagged her.

From a tiny silver tube with a cap upon it, which she took from her
dressing-case, she extracted a single little white tabloid, and
swallowed it.

"I wonder--I wonder if we shall really be successful?" she murmured to
herself.  "There must be no slip this time--no recurrence of that
unfortunate contretemps in the Martin affair.  Phew!  That was a narrow
shave.  I was in Melun only just in time. A few days later, and all
chance of dispelling suspicion would have gone!"

She reflected how on more than one occasion they had sailed very near
the wind--far too near to be pleasant--and how they had narrowly escaped
a closer inquiry.  Lilla, however, was always fearless, even when her
husband expressed doubts.  It was she, indeed, who was the moving spirit
of the whole affair, for she went about in her circle of society with
her eyes and ears ever open until she saw an opportunity to put into
motion that deadly machinery which, worked with such subtle cunning,
never failed to increase their bank balance.

She stood at her window as the full moon rose over the loch,
transforming the scene into a veritable fairyland, and here she remained
in deep reflection. She was contemplating the course she should pursue
when she met Mrs. Morrison on the morrow.  Already they had become
friends, the widow from Kirkcudbrightshire being, of course, in entire
ignorance that the pleasant woman from London had come to Ardlui for the
sole purpose of making her acquaintance. Ena Pollen was possessed of a
cunning that few women possess unless they are adventuresses.  She saw
that she must allow this Mrs. Morrison to seek her society.  Already she
realised that the Scotch widow had been greatly attracted by her
conversation; hence she decided that on the morrow she must not be too
eager to meet and chat with her.

She was in no mood for sleep, therefore she pulled down the blind, and
seating herself at a little table in the room, penned a letter which she
addressed to "B. Braybourne, Esquire, 93, Pont Street, London," and in
the course of which she wrote:


"_Things are going even better than I expected. Mrs. M., who made the
first advance, is extremely affable to me.  I hope that within a week or
ten days I can be back in London.  Mrs. M., on leaving here, is going to
Brighton to visit a niece, so I may see something of her.  Do not write
here, as I may be leaving any day.  I have had a letter from Emery. It
was sent to Upper Brook Street, and fortunately enclosed to me in an
envelope.  It would have been unfortunate if it had come here addressed
to Mrs. M.! Would it not?  But do not be alarmed!  I have given
instructions that no letters are to be forwarded in future._"


Next day after breakfast she went out to the post-box and there dropped
in the letter, so that it would leave by the afternoon steamer for the
south.  And after she took a long walk alone along the loch-side, under
Ben Voirlich, as far as the little village of Inveruglas, and thence up
the Inveruglas water, a pretty stream which comes rushing down through
the woods from Loch Sloy.  And there in the cool shade she at last sat
down upon a moss-grown boulder and took out a book and read.

She was playing a waiting game, and one that succeeded, for as she rose
from her table after lunch, Mrs. Morrison came up to her, saying:

"Why, wherever have you been, Mrs. Pollen? I've been seeking everywhere
for you."

"Have you?" she asked quite innocently.  "I've been for a walk to the
Inveruglas water."

"Oh!  Isn't it delightful there in the woods?" said the widow.  "I've
been there often.  We used to go and picnic there sometimes--right on up
Loch Sloy.  It is very grand and lonely up there, and the view in all
directions is superb."

"I've only been in the woods at the bottom of the mountain," the Red
Widow replied.

"Well, I was going to ask you whether, if you haven't anything better to
do, you would drive with me up Glen Falloch to Crianlarich," said Mrs.
Morrison.

"I shall be most delighted," replied Ena.  "I'm sure it is awfully good
of you."

"Well, as we are both alone, it will be a pleasure for me to have your
company," Mrs. Morrison assured her.

Therefore at three o'clock they left in a carriage which took them away
into the picturesque glen for six miles or so, past the little village
of Inverarnan, until they reached that pleasant little spot Crianlarich,
sheltering beneath the high Ben More at the head of the narrow Glen
Dochart, with Loch Fay beyond.

They wandered about the heather gossiping on all sorts of subjects, the
Red Widow telling her a number of purely fictitious stories about
herself and her travels, while Mrs. Morrison told her much about the
happiness of her own married life.

"I have never cared to enter society because, while my husband lived, it
never attracted me," she said, as they sat together upon a rock among
the heather whence they had a magnificent view up Glen Dochart. "My
husband hated it.  He was a self-made man.  A baronetcy was offered him,
but he refused it.  He did not agree with the system whereby donations
to party funds makes an honest man a pinchbeck gentleman."

Ena laughed.

"True!" she declared.  "I admire Mr. Morrison for his outspokenness."

"Well, that is why I never entered society," Mrs. Morrison said, with a
sigh.

"But why don't you see a little more of life?" Ena suggested.  "You
appear, from what you say, to be buried alive at Carsphairn!"

"I see but very few people, but I take a great interest in the estate,
and I have a few shooting parties--mostly friends of my late husband."

"Why not come to London for a month or so? Go to the theatres and
restaurants, and have an enjoyable time?  I do, and I find that I'm
amused and meet many interesting people.  You are going to Brighton.
Why not remain in London for a bit after your visit there?" the Red
Widow suggested. "I know a good many people, and I think you would have
a nice time.  Besides, you would do shopping also.  Paris and London are
the only places where one can buy anything decent to wear nowadays."

"You are really very good, Mrs. Pollen, to offer to entertain me in
London," she declared.  "Of course, I have other engagements, but----"

"Oh, but those can be broken.  If you are going to Brighton, make a stay
in London on your return. I live in Upper Brook Street.  Do you know
it?"

"Oh yes.  I once, long ago, had a friend who lived there.  I know it
quite well."

"I have only a small flat, otherwise I would offer you hospitality."

"Oh--no," said the widow.  "I can easily stay at the Carlton, the Ritz,
or somewhere."

"Then think it over," said the pleasant woman from London.

"Yes, I will," replied the other.  "We have many things in common, I
believe, and I am sure that we shall be good friends."

"I'm delighted to hear that your thoughts coincide with my own.  I make
very few new acquaintances; I have so many old friends."

"And I make none.  Not that I'm at all exclusive, I hope.  But the
majority of women I meet I find too shallow and frivolous, and they
don't attract me."

"Then I consider myself highly honoured!" laughed Ena, as the pair rose
to walk back to the Crianlarich Hotel to tea.

And while Mrs. Morrison of Carsphairn, ignorant of what was in progress,
believed that she really had found a delightful friend--a woman after
her own heart--the Red Widow smiled within herself, highly gratified at
her success.




                              *CHAPTER IX*

                       *A GENTLEMAN NAMED GREIG*


The days passed pleasantly enough at Ardlui. Mrs. Morrison and her
newly-found friend usually went walking or driving together over the
heather-clad mountains, or along the loch-side, so remotely picturesque
and silent.

One day she received an offer--through a firm of estate-agents in
Edinburgh--from a well-known cotton-spinner in Oldham to rent Carsphairn
furnished for a year.  It was a most tempting offer, and Mrs. Morrison
showed the letter to her friend.

"If I were you, I would accept it," Mrs. Pollen urged.  "It would do you
good to travel, to see London life a little, and go over to Paris and to
Nice in winter.  I could not vegetate always on a Scottish estate, much
as I love the country."

"I confess I feel half inclined to accept.  Lately I have felt very
lonely and dull at Carsphairn, and now with winter in front of us I
should, I agree, be far more happy with a little amusement."

"Of course," said Ena, as they were walking together near the hotel.
"You are going to Edinburgh next week, so I would write to the agents
and say that you will call upon them."

"Very well, I will," said Mrs. Morrison.  "You are coming to Edinburgh,
too, aren't you?"

"Just for a couple of days before I return to London."

"Then we will travel together, and stay at the Caledonian," said Augusta
Morrison.

And so it was agreed.

That Ena had successfully ingratiated herself with Mrs. Morrison was
proved by a letter she wrote that day to her niece at Brighton, in which
she said:


"_I have met an exceedingly nice woman here--a Mrs. Pollen, who lives in
Upper Brook Street, London.  I will ask her down to Brighton while I am
with you.  She has persuaded me to spend a little time in London after I
leave you, and I think the change will do me good.  I am contemplating
letting Carsphairn furnished for a year, and spending the winter first
on the Riviera, and later in Egypt. I make few friends, as you know, but
I am sure you will like Mrs. Pollen.  She is very often at the
Metropole, at Brighton.  Next week we go to Edinburgh together, and
after I have done my business there I shall come straight to you._"


Ena, with her innate cunning, had been quick to realise the open
friendship which her companion had extended towards her.  This somewhat
surprised her, for a woman is the enemy of every other woman. Few women
ever see beauty or good qualities in another.

Only a few days before Ena went north, she was discussing the point with
Lilla Braybourne over tea in the latter's drawing-room.

"Women see in every other female thing a potential rival, my dear
Lilla," she had said.  "That is what makes my task so hard.  Every woman
defends herself against every other woman, fully confident that the hand
of the female world is raised against her."

"I think I agree," was Lilla's reply.  "I've hardly ever known a woman
to admire the good looks of another of her sex.  Curious, isn't it?  But
it's quite true what you say.  Pussies lap tea and scandal everywhere,
and even a female saint too often uses her crown of thorns to scratch."

"Yes," laughed the handsome adventuress.  "I heard it said the other day
that to the woman of thirty the girl of eighteen is a crime, and that
to-day's fashion is to look sixteen if you're sixty, and to collar your
daughter's lovers if they are not wide awake enough to prevent you.
That's what makes it so hard for me."

"Few women can attract women, Ena.  You are one of them.  You deserve
the O.B.E. for it."

"But it is a most difficult and often dangerous undertaking," she
declared; "and, after all, the O.B.E. has been given for less."

By the least lapse of the tongue or a too eager appearance to scrape up
an acquaintanceship would, Ena knew, alienate Mrs. Morrison for ever.
The widow's reverence for her departed husband was the saving clause.
She had professed deep sympathy, and in the delightful fiction she had
told about her own life and "dear Peter," her late husband, she had
attracted Augusta as one of the few women who were womanly.

Who was it said that modern love starts in Heaven and ends in the Sunday
newspaper?  Ena's philosophy was always amusing.  She scoffed at love,
at life, at beauty, at everything.  Indeed, on that very day as she
walked with Mrs. Morrison she had caused her to laugh heartily by
referring to some woman friend of hers who lived at Surbiton as "one of
those women who shine with virtue and the cheapest sort of complexion
soap."

Ena Pollen had a caustic tongue as far as her own sex was concerned, yet
she could assume such a suave, sweet manner towards women as entirely to
disarm them.

It was so in Mrs. Morrison's case.  As the warm, delightful days went
on, they were inseparable, exchanging intimate details of their own
careers, and fast becoming firm friends.

The arrival of the steamer from Balloch each afternoon was the chief
excitement, and by it visitors to the hotel came and left.

One afternoon the steamer brought a short, round-faced little man, very
well-dressed, whose speech showed that he came from Glasgow.  He had a
suit-case with him, and took the one room which happened to be
disengaged, giving the name of John Greig.  He was an alert-looking
business man, probably a Glasgow merchant out for a few days' relaxation
from the eternal bustle of Sauchiehall Street.

He sat alone at dinner, and once or twice glanced in the direction of
the two ladies who sat together in the window, for Mrs. Morrison had now
joined Mrs. Pollen.  Both were better dressed than the other visitors,
especially Ena, who wore a semi-evening frock and a jade-coloured velvet
band in her red hair.

After dinner the visitor strolled alone in the garden until he found a
man to chat with, the pair sitting smoking in the moonlight until it
became time to retire.

When John Greig reached his room he flung himself into a chair, and
beneath his breath, remarked:

"By Jove!  She's a handsome woman, too!  But she's not Joan Eastlake.
That's my belief. Nevertheless, now I'm here, I may as well make quite
certain."

And he took out a final cigarette from his case and smoked it
reflectively before he turned in.

Next day he was about early at the loch-side, and though he contrived to
arouse no suspicion in the minds of either those connected with the
hotel or any of his fellow-visitors, he kept casual observation upon the
pair.  Now and then he would accidentally be so close in their vicinity
as to be able to overhear scraps of their conversation.  Yet so cleverly
did he do this, and so utterly uninterested did he appear to be, that
even Ena, who was ever suspicious of eavesdroppers and persons watching,
failed to realise the intense interest which she had evoked in the
little round-faced man.

The following day Ena accompanied her friend on a trip across to Loch
Katrine, but the stranger idled about the hotel and wrote letters.
After lunch, however, at the hour when the small establishment was
quietest, the curiosity of anyone watching him would certainly have been
aroused.  His actions were truly a little peculiar.

At about three o'clock that afternoon, having ascertained that none of
the servants were about, he slipped silently to Mrs. Pollen's bedroom,
the door of which was unlocked, and, entering quickly, closed the door
after him.  Then, walking straight to a big dressing-case which lay upon
a chair near the window, he took out a bunch of keys and tried one after
the other in an effort to open it.

He failed, none of the keys would fit.

"If I force it she'll suspect," he murmured.  "No, I must give it up for
the present--curse it!"

Then he made a tour of the room, opened the wardrobe, and examined the
contents of several drawers, but though some expensive jewellery was
there, he cast it aside in contempt.

Mr. Greig did not want jewels.  It was evident that he was in search of
something else far more interesting.  But that lock upon the
dressing-case was an unusually good one, and had defied all his many
keys.

There was but one course to pursue, and that was to retreat to his own
room, which he did in great disappointment and chagrin.

That evening he watched the two women on their return.  His movements
were those of a practised watcher.  He was unobtrusive, disinterested in
everything save the picturesque surroundings, and behaved as though he
had no interest whatever in any person in the hotel.

That evening, while in the garden after dinner, he found himself sitting
on a seat beside Mrs. Morrison, and ventured to address a remark to her
regarding the glorious sunset.

What more natural than in a few moments Ena and her friend were chatting
affably with the new-comer.

"This is my first visit to Scotland," Ena declared, though it was a
falsehood, "and I'm delighted with it.  My views--those of a
Londoner--have entirely altered concerning Scotland and the Scottish
people. I don't agree now with the ridicule cast upon them."

"I'm very glad of that," declared Mr. Greig. "In the south you don't
really understand us, I think.  And perhaps we here don't quite
understand you.  National prejudices are very hard to break down."

"They are.  But you see the majority of the English never come north.
They view the Scottish people by the ridicule cast upon them by
performers on our music-halls.  It is unfortunate, but it is a fact."

"Never mind," laughed the pleasant-faced man from Glasgow.  "Our
national pride is never hurt by those amblers on the stage who wax fat
upon the profits of their mimicry.  We only laugh at it up here, I
assure you," he declared to Mrs. Pollen.

The conversation drifted naturally to the fact that Mrs. Morrison told
him her name, which was Scottish, and the identity of her late husband,
so well known in Glasgow.

"Oh!  I knew your husband quite well, Mrs. Morrison," declared John
Greig, for no shrewder or more well-informed person was there between
the Lowlands and Cromarty.  "I knew him twenty years ago.  Do you
recollect Mr. Buchanan, who had an office in St. Vincent Street,
Glasgow, and with whom he went into partnership?  Mr. Buchanan died
about four years ago.  I went to visit him once at that beautiful house
of his on Loch Rannoch."

"Then you knew Mr. Buchanan!" cried Mrs. Morrison. "He was a dear
fellow.  My husband was devoted to him.  Together they built up the
works."

"I know.  Everyone in commercial circles in Glasgow knows how closely
they worked together, and, Mrs. Morrison, I may tell you that not a
worker on the Clyde has any but good words for your husband and his
partner.  The conditions of work in your husband's place at Govan were
always ideal. We hear much of labour trouble in these post-bellum days,
but if all works were like your husband's there would be little to
grumble at."

"It is awfully good of you to pay such a tribute to my husband's regard
for his employees," said Mrs. Morrison, much gratified.  "He and I often
discussed their welfare, and I always agreed with him that labour should
be duly paid and there should be no sweating.  We have Socialist
propaganda on the Clyde to-day, but is it at all astonishing in view of
the high prices, of Government muddle and waste, and the advancement
into society by the King's favour in the shape of 'honours' of
bare-faced swindlers and those who escape under the more euphonious name
of profiteers?"

"Ah!  I'm glad that you have realised the deadly peril of Britain, Mrs.
Morrison," Greig said.  "As a business man in Glasgow--I am an exporter
to the East--I know much of what is transpiring among the Socialists,
and I know the deadly peril of Britain to-day."

The fact that Greig had known not only her husband but his partner,
Buchanan, appealed to Mrs. Morrison, with the result that he had
frequent chats with her, and incidentally with her friend, Ena Pollen,
whose belongings he had so carefully scrutinised in her absence.

The man from Glasgow, with his round, merry, well-shaven face, a
countenance of prosperity, was a typical man of business, and he
appealed to old Morrison's widow as a very nice man.

With her estimate Ena, any suspicion utterly disarmed, entirely agreed.

Pleasant, humorous, and careless in his relaxation from money-making in
grim and grimy Glasgow, John Greig was an excellent fellow on holiday.
His estimate of women--for he was a bachelor--coincided entirely with
that of Ena Pollen.

To be frank, he had, in the course of conversation, gauged her views
regarding her own sex, and he at once sought to cultivate her
acquaintance upon her line of thought.

"Of course," she said next morning, as he found himself gossiping with
her after breakfast, "woman ought not to work at all.  No man really
likes a woman who works for him.  Work isn't woman's natural element,
though trouble is.  Work is an odious word to women."

"Really, Mrs. Pollen, your philosophy is quite upon that of my own
thinking," laughed Greig. "Once a man I know declared to me that to
girls business life would be a dull existence if it were not for its sly
opening for an illicit romance."

"One woman writer has said, and with much truth, that petticoats, like
time, were made for slaves, and that there is more virtue in a single
pair of trousers than there is in a multitude of skirts," laughed Ena.

"True.  Was it not the same lady author who told us that the wrong part
of wrong-doing is being found out?"

"Ah! yes.  And the same feminine philosopher went farther," Ena said.
"She declared that the woman who thinks it wicked to buy silk petticoats
and luxurious 'undies'--'because no one sees them'--is a fool; but the
hedonist who frankly revels in the feel and _frou-frou_ of silk and
_crepe de chine_ and mysterious lace things is as wise as Eve, who wore
leaves rather than nothing, and made a tantalising mystery of herself
out of the poor resources at her command."

The man from Glasgow laughed immoderately. "Really," he remarked, "you
have no great admiration of your own sex, Mrs. Pollen."

"No, I have not," declared the Red Widow frankly, as they both halted
and leaned over a gate which gave entrance to a great green meadow
beyond which was the edge of the loch, the water of which lay like a
mirror in the morning sunlight.

Up there, far removed from the life and bustle of the outer world, with
all its political bickerings and its labour troubles, life was very
enjoyable, and the two women who had become so friendly had quickly
discovered in John Greig a man whose ideas corresponded exactly with
their own--a man who had formed distinct views upon life, and who was
not afraid to admit them.

At last came the afternoon of their departure for Edinburgh.  They bade
Mr. Greig farewell on the Pier just before the steamer started for
Balloch.

Then, going on board, they waved him a farewell as the paddles began to
revolve, sending out long ripples over the glassy surface of the loch.

He raised his hat with a merry laugh, but as he did so, he remarked
beneath his breath:

"After all--I'm not sure, _even now_!"




                              *CHAPTER X*

                    *MORE MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES*


"Let's pull up here; it's so delightfully shady."

Marigold Ramsay, who spoke, lay back among the crimson cushions of the
punt, with her eyes fixed upon the sky.

She loved the river.  That Sunday afternoon was perfect, and she was
enjoying the day on the river after a week's hard work in the bank.

Gerald, who was an expert with the punt-pole, was taking her up that
pretty reach of the Thames which winds between Shepperton and Walton,
with the long rows of poplars fringing the river bank.

They had lunched at the little riverside inn at Halliford, and were now
making their way slowly up-stream.  Gerald, in flannels, with coat off
and sleeves upturned, placing his pole and withdrawing it without any
apparent effort.

Since that adventurous night at Bridge Place they had become even closer
friends.  No day passed but they met.  The previous two Sundays Durrant
had spent with her, the first at Dorking, where they had wandered over
Leith Hill and along the Surrey lanes, and the next Sunday at Brighton.
This, the third Sunday, they had decided to spend together on the
Thames.

As they were passing beneath a long row of trees which overhung the
water, the girl, who was in white, raised herself from her couch of
cushions and suggested that they should tie up the punt there.

"Certainly," he replied, and a few moments later he had secured the punt
to a tree root, and, sitting down to rest, he lit his pipe.

"Do you know, Gerald, I've been thinking again about Mr. Boyne," she
said.  "I can't get the man out of my mind."

"Well, to tell the truth, Marigold, neither can I," replied the young
man.  "Ever since that night at Hammersmith I've been trying in vain to
solve the mystery."

"About the person concealed upstairs," remarked the blue-eyed girl
reflectively.  "Yes, it's most curious."

"It's more than curious," her companion declared. "Though I haven't
mentioned it to you, I've watched the house for several nights, but I
must admit that I've seen nothing at all suspicious."

"Oh!  Then you've been on the watch!" she cried excitedly.

"Yes, on four occasions, and all to no purpose. Last Friday I waited
from nine o'clock till one in the morning, and got wet through.  He
returned about ten, but did not come out again."

"He was upstairs with his secret friend, I suppose," said the girl.

"No doubt.  Whoever may be confined there could not exist without seeing
a human face and conversing with him, even for five minutes each day, or
he would certainly go mad," said Gerald.  "You remember I said that
Italians, who have abolished capital punishment for murder, have
substituted solitary confinement.  It is far more terrible.  They
confine the assassin in a cell in silence, without sight of a human
face.  Their food is placed upon a turntable which revolves into the
cell, so that the prisoner never sees a face.  Such torture was invented
long ago in the Bastille, and in every case it drives the guilty one
raving mad within five years."

"How horrible!" cried the girl.

"I admit it is, but surely the punishment is far greater than that of
hanging, or even the guillotine. Both are instantaneous, yet in Italy
the criminal suffers all the tortures of Dante's Inferno--and deservedly
so."

"Then you saw nothing?" asked Marigold.

"I fancied a lot, but I saw really nothing to increase my suspicions.
One thing we know--that he is concealing some person in that locked
room. Now who can the person be?"

"It may be some relative who has done something very wrong and is afraid
of the police," suggested the girl.

"Agreed.  It may be.  But we have discussed the matter so many times
that I think we should not talk further--but act," he said.  "We have
proved beyond doubt that Bernard Boyne is a man of mystery.  Your deaf
aunt, a most worthy woman, acts as his housekeeper.  Why does he retain
her? Merely because she is stone-deaf.  Why does he want a deaf woman to
wait upon him?  Because there are sometimes noises in the house which
would arouse the curiosity of any who chanced to overhear them."

"We must discover the identity of the person concealed," remarked the
girl with the big blue eyes, as she lay back lazily among the cushions.

"We must.  At all costs I intend to solve this mystery.  Marigold," he
said, removing his pipe from his lips and looking straight into her
eyes, "my own belief is that you have discovered some very strange and
startling drama of our complex London life--one which, when
investigated, will prove to be astounding."

"Do you really think so?" asked the girl, looking into his handsome
face.

"Yes--I do.  Up to the present all our efforts have been in vain," he
said.  "Only one fact has been established, and that is that there is a
prisoner--whether voluntary or not we cannot tell--in that
creeper-covered house.  We both saw Boyne creep up with food to him,
while I saw his light beneath the door.  Somebody is living up there in
secret.  Is it a man, or is it a woman?  His eagerness makes me think
that it is a woman.  Who is it?"

"Somebody he is shielding--somebody who has committed some serious
crime, who fears to show his or her face lest it be recognised by agents
of Scotland Yard."

"Really, Marigold, you are very acute," he exclaimed.  "We have had so
many murder mysteries since the war, and in all of them the police
confess their utter confusion, that the present situation fills me with
great apprehension."

"I know," she said.  "But why not let us begin again?  Let us watch the
house.  I'll watch one night, and you watch the next.  Surely we can by
that means discover the truth.  If the place is watched every night,
this man Boyne must, in the end, be defeated."

"But I thought you liked Boyne?"

"Yes; he has been always very good to me. Remember that he is the owner
of the place, and my aunt is his housekeeper," replied the girl.

"I quite appreciate your point," said Durrant. "But if we are to fully
delve into the affair we must not be influenced by the fellow's open
heart.  The greatest criminals of the world have always been those who
have been popular on account of their bonhomie and generosity."

The girl sat silent, her eyes fixed upon the rushes slowly waving in the
stream.  A motor-launch passed them, making a high wash against the
bank, but she took no heed.  She was still thinking of that strange
occupant of the house in Bridge Place.

Three times during the past week she had, indeed, visited her aunt in an
endeavour to discover something more.  Boyne had been out, as usual,
therefore she had been able to examine the place thoroughly.  She had
ascended to that locked room on each occasion, and had listened there.
Once in the silence she had heard a distinct movement, a slight
rustling, within.

Yet afterwards, as she had reflected, she wondered whether it had not
been due to her imagination, or perhaps to a blind flapping at an open
window.  When one is suspicious, it is so easy to imagine queer
circumstances.

"I only wish we could solve the mystery," she remarked wistfully.  "It
worries me.  Auntie seems quite unconcerned."

"Because she has no suspicion, worthy old soul. She has no knowledge of
Mr. Boyne's nocturnal visits with food to his friend."

"Why shouldn't we tell her, and then she'll be on the alert?" suggested
the girl.  "She might discover something."

"She might--but more probably she would be too eager, and thus put Boyne
upon his guard," remarked the young fellow.  "No.  We must work together
in strict secrecy if we intend to be successful."

"But who can he possibly be hiding?"

The young man in flannels shrugged his shoulders, and replied:

"I confess that the problem is getting on my nerves.  The more I think
it over the more inscrutable it becomes.  Mischief is being worked
somewhere.  Of that I feel confident.  All the actions of our friend
Boyne point to it."

"But that shroud?  Why does he wear it?" asked Marigold blankly.

"As a disguise, without a doubt.  Perhaps the person upstairs has been
confined there so long that his mind has already become deranged, as is
inevitable after a long period of solitary incarceration, and Boyne now
takes the precaution of adopting the simple disguise so that his friend
should fail to identify him.  He may have done his captive some great
injury--or something."

"True; but, if he has, it was not in order to gain. Bernard Boyne is a
comparatively poor man.  My aunt says that he seems to have only just
sufficient money to make both ends meet."

Gerald Durrant drew a long breath.  Upon his countenance was an
expression of doubt.

"He may pass as a poor man, and yet be rich," he remarked.  "It may
sound romantic, but there are many people living in the by-streets of
London, successfully concealed beneath assumed names and unsuspected by
their neighbours, who for years have lived a life of penury though they
are really well off. And their motive is, for some reason or other, to
cut themselves adrift from friends in their own sphere.  Indeed, it is a
well known fact that in the last days of King Edward an ex-Cabinet
Minister lived for several years in seclusion in a meagre side-street
near Kennington Park, as Mr. Benwell, his real identity never being
suspected until, owing to his sudden death, an inquest was held, and the
police, searching his papers, discovered that he was immensely wealthy
and one of Britain's foremost statesmen, who was believed to be living
in seclusion in Italy."

"Perhaps Mr. Boyne is some person who has sought retirement in a similar
manner," Marigold suggested.

"No.  If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Boyne is playing a very deep and rather
dangerous game--how dangerous I cannot yet discover."

"But you could discover nothing when you watched--just as I failed to
find out any fact," she said.  "I had no idea you were on the watch."

"I saw you on Tuesday night," he laughed. "You arrived at the house
about half-past eight, and had a great trouble getting in."

"Were you there?" she cried eagerly.  "I never dreamed that you were in
the vicinity.  Yes, you are right.  I rang and banged on the door half a
dozen times before I could attract auntie's attention. She generally
leaves the door unlocked in case anyone should call."

"Boyne returned about twenty minutes after you had left, but though I
watched till midnight, he did not come out again."

"Couldn't you take a day off one day and follow him when he goes out in
the morning?" the girl suggested.  "I would do it, but I fear that he'd
recognise me."

"I might.  But I think I may be more successful at night.  It is very
difficult to keep observation upon a person in broad daylight.  In the
darkness it is much easier."

"Why not try again to-night?" suggested Marigold. "I'll go with you."

He shook his head.

"Sunday night is a bad night.  We know his habits on week-days, but he
may have gone out all day to-day," he replied.  "No; to-morrow would be
more likely."

"Then let's both go there to-morrow night, and if he comes out of the
house we'll watch where he goes."

With this suggestion Gerald agreed, and after she had smoked the
cigarette he handed to her from his case, they resumed their punting
up-stream in the afternoon sunshine.

Next night they met by appointment at Hammersmith Broadway station at
half-past eight, and after a consultation, it was arranged that Marigold
should call on her aunt on some pretext, and having ascertained if Boyne
had returned, she would rejoin Gerald at a spot in King Street.

Hence he lounged about the busy thoroughfare for a quarter of an hour
until she returned with the news that Boyne had been home since six
o'clock, he having returned unusually early.

"Ah!  That's a good sign," said Gerald.  "He'll certainly go out again
to-night!"

As they strolled together they arranged that Marigold should loiter near
the King Street end of the street, while Gerald should stand in an entry
near the house which he had used in his previous observations.

"If you see me pass into King Street, don't follow me too closely," he
urged, "and at all hazards don't let him see you.  Remember that people
who are engaged in crooked business keep their eyes skinned and are
always full of suspicion."

"I'll take good care he doesn't see me," the girl answered him.  "Trust
me to be discreet."

Then they parted, and for about an hour Marigold waited in vain for a
sight of her lover.  It had now grown quite dark, and the street lamps
in Bridge Place were none too brilliant.  She was still loitering in the
darkness, full of expectation at every footstep on the pavement.

At last she again heard footsteps, and a few moments later recognised
Boyne's well-built figure passing within the zone of lamplight across
the way. He was walking hurriedly in the direction of King Street, all
unconscious that he was being followed. But a few moments later, with
noiseless tread--for he wore rubber heels to his shoes--Durrant came
along, his eyes searching eagerly for the girl he loved.

Suddenly he saw her in the shadow, and realised that she was discreetly
following him.

The pair exchanged a few words in the crowded King Street, and while
Gerald hurried on after Boyne towards the station, the girl followed a
little distance behind.

They saw him buying a ticket at the station and also purchase a late
edition of the evening paper. Then he descended to the platform of the
tube and took a train going towards Piccadilly.

Gerald and Marigold, who had separated, travelled on the same train
until, on arrival at Knightsbridge, the man they were watching alighted.
Marigold, who had been on the alert at each station, saw him emerge from
the next car, while close behind him was Gerald, with whom, of course,
he was unacquainted.

Together they followed him along Sloane Street to Pont Street, where he
ascended the steps of a smart-looking red-brick house and opened the
door with a latchkey.

"Now that's curious!" remarked Gerald when he rejoined the girl.  "Did
you notice that he entered that house yonder as though it were his own
home? I wonder who lives there?"

"We must find out," declared Marigold, highly excited at having tracked
Mr. Boyne so far.

"Yes.  But I shall be compelled to watch the house and see what happens
now," he said.  "I mean to follow him to-night wherever he goes.  It
almost seems as if he lives here--as well as in Hammersmith!"

"Well--he certainly has a latchkey, and this is not a street where they
take in lodgers."

"No," he said.  "Some of these houses are the legations of the smaller
States of Europe.  Over there is the Serbian Legation."

"Well, we'll wait in patience," she said. "Fortunately it's a fine
night."

"The last time I watched, last week, it came on terribly wet about
eleven o'clock," he said, "and I hadn't my mackintosh.  When I started
out it seemed a perfect night.  But just now the weather is so
changeable."

On the darker side of the street by the railings, the young people idled
together, with a watchful eye upon the long flight of steps which Boyne
had ascended.  Though the blinds were drawn, it was evident that the
comfortable West End house was well lighted, and it was, no doubt, the
residence of someone of considerable means.  Indeed, it requires a good
income to run a house even in Pont Street in these post-bellum days.

The traffic had died down.  Few taxis were passing, for as yet the
home-coming pleasure seekers were not on their way from the theatres.

For half an hour the pair waited in the shadow, full of eager curiosity.
The movements of the mystery-man of Hammersmith were, to say the least,
suspicious.

Suddenly, from the basement a young footman appeared, and hurrying along
to the end of the road, hailed a taxi and brought it to the door.

Then, as they watched, they saw, a few seconds later, the front door
open, and a man in evening dress descended the steps and entered the
taxi.

The light from the open door shone upon his face as he halted to speak
to the servant, and then, to their amazement, they recognised the man to
be Bernard Boyne.

His chameleon-like change staggered them both for a second, but Gerald,
ever quick to act, whispered:

"Go home, Marigold.  This is very funny.  I'll try to follow," and a
moment later he had sped away noiselessly into the darkness.

The fact was that his quick eyes had espied a taxi which at that moment
had driven up on a stand a little farther down, and without delay he
told the man that he wanted him to follow the taxi in front, and that he
would give him treble fare for doing so.

"Right y'are, sir!" replied the young Cockney driver, who instantly
entered into the spirit of the chase, and already his cab was on the
move as Boyne left.

Gerald saw Marigold standing watching the departure, and knowing that
she would make the best of her way to Wimbledon, kept his eyes upon the
taxi, which was soon out into Knightsbridge, going in the direction of
Hyde Park Corner.

Why Boyne, the humble collector of insurance premiums, should possess a
latchkey to a house in Pont Street, and emerge from there dressed in
evening clothes as a gentleman of means, sorely puzzled Gerald Durrant.

He felt instinctively that he was on the track of some very remarkable
sequence of events.  This man who disguised himself every night before
he took food and drink up to his imprisoned friend, evidently lived a
double life.  In Pont Street he was a rich man, while in Hammersmith he
was poor.

One point of satisfaction was that he was following the unsuspecting
man, and would at least know his destination, even if that night he
failed to discover the object of his visit.

That he was in a hurry was apparent.  He seemed to have spoken excitedly
to the young footman--who appeared to be a foreigner--before stepping
into the taxi.

Up Park Lane they went, until suddenly the taxi conveying the man of
mystery pulled up before a house in Upper Brook Street, while the
vehicle in which Gerald had followed passed on for some distance before
it stopped.

"'E's gone in that 'ouse, sir," said the taxi-man in a low voice.

"Yes, so I see.  He may not be long.  I'll wait," and he stepped out and
strolled a little way in the opposite direction.  Meanwhile Boyne had
paid his man, who had turned his cab and left.

The house into which Boyne had disappeared was a block of flats, for as
he passed he had caught a glimpse of the uniformed porter who had
saluted him and followed him to the lift.

The mystery was thereby greatly increased, though many more startling
circumstances were yet to be encountered.

Gerald Durrant idled there in the vicinity of the taxi, little dreaming
into what a labyrinth of doubt and mystery he had now been drawn.




                              *CHAPTER XI*

                          *SPREADING THE NET*


Gerald Durrant remained outside the house in Upper Brook Street for more
than half an hour. Much puzzled, he stood in a doorway opposite the
block of flats into which Boyne had gone.

Marigold was on her way back to Wimbledon Park, and that night he
intended to probe the mystery farther.

He waited, and still waited.  A neighbouring clock struck the hours.
The hall-porter at one o'clock closed the door and switched off the
lights, yet Gerald still waited for the insurance agent of Hammersmith
to emerge.

That he was known to the hall-porter was apparent, for the man had
saluted him.  It was strange, to say the least, that the man who was
compelled to scrape for a living in Hammersmith should be guest in a
fashionable flat in Upper Brook Street.

Bernard Boyne was certainly a man of mystery, for not only did he
possess the latchkey of the smart house in Pont Street, but he was also
known at that block of expensive flats.

The young fellow lit a fresh cigarette and, leaning against the deep
portico of the house opposite, possessed himself in patience.  Time went
on.  A police constable passed and repassed, but did not notice him in
the shadow, for he hid his cigarette. All the windows of the great
building he was watching were in darkness.  It was evident now that
Boyne would not come out again before morning.

Yet Durrant, with great pertinacity, waited there through the whole
night until, at half-past six, the hall-porter threw open the outer
door, and milkmen, the postman, and newspaper boys began to arrive in
quick succession.  Without bite or sup Gerald waited there till
half-past ten, when, full of chagrin at being thus foiled, he was
compelled to hurry to his office, getting a wash and a shave on the way.

At lunch he met Marigold as usual, and told her of his failure,
whereupon she said:

"I have the afternoon off.  I'll go at once and see my aunt, and
ascertain when he got back."

This she did, and when that evening Durrant arrived home at Ealing he
found a wire awaiting him which told him that when Boyne's housekeeper
took him up his early tea as usual, her master had been in bed!

Durrant held his breath.  The mystery-man had some means of exit from
Upper Brook Street--a back way, without a doubt.

But what was the motive of it all?  Why should he pose as penurious in
Hammersmith, and wear evening clothes in Mayfair?

That night Durrant went again to Upper Brook Street, and, exploring the
rear of the building, found that there was a servants' entrance to the
flats which led into a mews, and through a back street.  By that Bernard
Boyne had, no doubt, walked out while Durrant had been keeping his night
vigil.

This fact further impressed both Marigold and her lover that Boyne was
not what he represented himself to be.

Durrant set out to probe the mystery, and by dint of ingenious
application to the affair, he became on friendly terms with the
hall-porter.  Truth to tell, Durrant had represented himself to be a
demobilised officer who had been in love with a lady who had rented one
of the flats.  He had discovered her name from the house-agent, and knew
that she had married during the war.

From the hall-porter he learned that the man who had passed in was an
occasional visitor, but to whom he did not know.  He would try and
ascertain. The lips of all hall-porters of flats are readily unlocked
when their hands are "crossed with silver."  And why not?  In our
post-war civilisation little is effected without a _quid pro quo_.  Even
the British Cabinet Minister looks for reward; alas! that it should be
so.  Patriotism in all the Allied Countries seems synonymous with
personal ruin, and those who have realised the fact are the profiteers
upon gallant men's lives.

Gerald's discovery at the back of Upper Brook Street brought the pair to
a dead end as far as their investigations went.

They met as usual at lunch and discussed the situation.  What could be
done?

"All I can see, Marigold, is for you to continue your visits constantly
to Bridge Place and learn all you can from your aunt," Durrant said.
"There is evidently something extraordinary in progress.  But what it is
we cannot possibly tell without more thorough investigation."

"But what can we do further?" asked the girl.

"I can do nothing just yet, except to receive reports from you," replied
Gerald.  "You can visit Boyne's house and let me know from time to time
what is in progress there."

"But the prisoner upstairs?" she asked.  "How can I know more?"

"By watching," was his reply.  "Do you know, Marigold, I've been
thinking--thinking deeply over the affair.  We are both agreed that we
intend to fathom the secret of this man.  Well, now could you not one
evening, when you visit your aunt, be taken suddenly very unwell, and
then remain there in the house and watch?"

"Really, Gerald, that's a splendid idea!" exclaimed the girl.  "Yet it
seems an imposition upon Mr. Boyne."

"I know that.  He poses as a man without anything whatever save the
commission he collects upon the premiums on the lives of the honest
inhabitants of Hammersmith.  Yet, as we know, he is in touch with
certain people of a much higher class than himself.  The house in Pont
Street is a great enigma to me.  We must elucidate the mystery.  That is
my object."

"I am ready to work at your orders, Gerald," was the girl's reply, with
the genuine love-look in her eyes.  "Yes, we will do our utmost to solve
this mystery!"

In consequence of this conversation, a few days later Marigold went one
afternoon to visit her aunt, old Mrs. Felmore, and in the evening was
taken very unwell.

Mr. Boyne, who returned as usual about six o'clock, was told of the
girl's illness and went down to the kitchen, where he saw her, and,
speaking kindly, asked if he should fetch the doctor.

"No, thank you, Mr. Boyne," the girl answered, rather weakly.  "It's
awfully good of you, but no doubt I shall be better presently, and able
to go home. I have a curious dizziness.  It came on quite suddenly."

"Are you subject to it?" he inquired.  And then in the next breath asked
if he could get her anything.

"My aunt has given me a cup of tea," was her reply.  "And I already feel
better."

"Don't think of going to Wimbledon to-night unless you feel better," he
urged.  "Mrs. Felmore can make you up a bed in the spare room."

She thanked him, and though she assured him she would be well enough to
go home in an hour or so, she had no intention of returning home that
night.

Boyne, on his part, looked weary and worn.  His clothes were shabby, and
his cheap boots were down at heel and dusty after a long day's tramp in
the meaner streets of Hammersmith.

Returning to his sitting-room, he took his bulky insurance books from
his pocket.  Then he threw off his jacket, sat down to tea in his shirt
sleeves, and fed "Nibby," his pet rat.

Mrs. Felmore, like many deaf folk, could tell what was said by watching
people's lips.  When her employer had left the kitchen, she remarked to
her niece:

"Isn't Mr. Boyne a dear nice man?  Whenever I feel unwell he is always
so ready to get me anything.  You know how bad I was with my rheumatism
last winter?  He wouldn't let me work, but engaged old Mrs. Kirk from
the Mall."

"Yes, auntie, he is," Marigold declared.  "But I didn't tell him how bad
I feel.  I really don't know what has come over me."

"Why not let him call the doctor?"

"Oh, no.  I'll be all right soon," she said cheerfully; and then she
reseated herself in the summer twilight near the open window.

At half-past eight o'clock Bernard Boyne, having washed and changed his
clothes, went out.

Marigold fell to wondering where he might be going.  It had been
arranged that Gerald should be on watch outside the house that night,
but when they had met at lunch, he had told her that he was compelled to
accompany his principal to Birmingham that afternoon, for a conference
was to be held in that city on the following day.

"I may be away for a day or two, dear," he had said.  "But in the
meanwhile discover all you can."

Boyne went direct from Hammersmith to Pont Street, where he found that
his wife had gone out to dinner.  She would be back soon after ten, the
young man-servant informed him.

Therefore he went to his room and put on evening clothes--a very
smartly-cut suit with white waist-coat and mother-of-pearl and diamond
buttons.  As he stood before the long cheval glass, examining himself
after he had tied his cravat and put on his coat, the transformation, he
thought, was surely complete.  Nobody meeting him in that luxuriously
furnished house would ever have recognised in him the trudging,
hard-working insurance agent of Hammersmith.

He descended to the drawing-room, but his wife did not return till past
ten.  She was in a strikingly handsome gown of black-and-gold tissue,
with a shimmering ornament in her hair, while around her neck was a rope
of splendid pearls.

"Well, Lilla!" he exclaimed pleasantly, as he threw himself lazily into
a soft arm-chair.  "I'm glad you're back early.  Where are we to meet
Ena?"

"At Murray's, at eleven.  Then we go on to the Carlton to supper," was
her reply.  "Remember our name to-night is Davidson, and we live at
Welsford Hall, in Northamptonshire.  Ena wants to introduce us to Mrs.
Morrison."

"But Mrs. Morrison is likely to meet one of us again, and it might be
awkward," the man remarked, as he slowly lit a cigarette.

"She is not likely to meet us again--except at Ena's house--is she?"
said his wife, with a curious expression in her narrow eyes.

"No, I suppose not--if all goes right, and there is no hitch," he said
reflectively.

"Hitch!  How can there be a hitch?" asked Lilla. "Ena will do her part,
while you do yours."

"When does Ena propose that the little affair shall be done?" he asked.

"Next Saturday--if that suits you?"

"Saturday," he repeated again reflectively, as he examined his
cigarette.  "It will take about nine to ten days, so on the following
Monday or Tuesday week it should be complete."

"It ought to be, Bernard.  We shall soon be wanting more money, you
know.  We've been spending freely and investing a lot of late.  Ena was
here this afternoon.  Mrs. Morrison came up from Brighton this morning
in order to go to the theatre with her, and meet us at supper
afterwards.  You can tell her how you hunt with the Fitzwilliam and Lord
Exeter's hounds.  She knows nothing of fox-hunting, and it will impress
her."

"Yes.  Ena has told me the woman is just the widow of a Glasgow man who
has plenty of money, but who knows practically nothing of English
society."

"Why Ena is so keen that we should meet the woman, I can't think," Lilla
remarked.

"Well, to tell you the truth, I suggested it," was his reply.  "When she
invites her to dine we shall be there.  It looks better for Ena to have
other guests, especially if--well, if anything happened."

"I hope nothing untoward will happen," she exclaimed quickly.

"No," he laughed.  "Don't worry, my dear.  It is all plain sailing.  We
shall cash a big cheque before long--depend upon it!  But time is
getting on.  We ought to get along to Murray's and meet them on
arrival."

Therefore the pair put on their coats, and a taxi being called, they
drove to Murray's, where they awaited the arrival of Mrs. Pollen and her
guest.

Ten minutes later they came.  The red-haired widow was dressed superbly,
and wore wonderful beads of Chinese jade.  Her companion, handsome and
also well-dressed, expressed delight when her hostess introduced her to
her old friends, Mr. and Mrs. Davidson.  The latter both became
extremely affable, appearing very pleased when Ena told them, what they
already knew--namely, that she had reserved a table at the Carlton for
supper.

Then the four drove in a taxi to Pall Mall, where they had a very
pleasant meal.

Mrs. Morrison, of Carsphairn, was a hard-headed and sensible woman.  She
cared but little for the so-called excitements of society, but that
evening she had greatly enjoyed the play, and now as she gazed around at
the smart crowd coming in and taking the tables allotted to them, the
daring and often magnificent dresses, and the host of good-looking men,
it was something of a novelty to her.

"Before my husband's death I travelled a good deal on the Continent,"
she explained to Mrs. Davidson.  "But nowadays I remain mostly in
Scotland.  I entertain a few people at Carsphairn for the shooting, but
beyond that I live very quietly."

"So do we," Lilla replied.  "We are just country cousins.  Our place is
in the wilds of Northamptonshire, and my husband hunts a good deal."

"Ah!  Northamptonshire and Leicestershire are the centre of fox-hunting,
are they not?" said the Scotch woman, addressing Mr. Davidson.

"Yes.  We have several packs within easy reach, though Welsford, where
we live, is, strictly speaking, in the Fitzwilliam country.  I love
hunting," he added.

"My husband even goes cubbing at four o'clock in the morning sometimes,"
laughed Mrs. Davidson.

"Ah!  He is evidently an enthusiast!" Mrs. Morrison agreed.  "My husband
was a fisherman, and I confess I had to go with him on some very dull
expeditions in the north of Scotland and in Ireland."

"That's the worst of men," Lilla declared.  "If they take up hunting,
fishing, or golf, it becomes an obsession.  They talk of nothing else."

And so the chatter about hunting and hunting men continued, apparently
to the intense amusement of Ena Pollen--or "Mrs. Morrison" as she was
known to the Manchester solicitor and the doctors who had pronounced her
life to be a "first-class" one.

The orchestra was playing one of the latest waltzes, and the big
restaurant was filled with chatter and laughter.  Surely none who sat
there that night and noticed the three ladies and their male companion
as they drank their champagne, and ate that supper dish of the London
restaurants, _mousse de jambon_ served from the ice, would ever have
dreamed that a most diabolical plot was in progress, a conspiracy the
most subtle and fiendish that the evil mind of man could ever devise.

Ena Pollen was, of course, the life and soul of the party.  Very
handsome, with her auburn hair and her bizarre dress, she was regarded
by half the people in the restaurant.  Some of them knew her by sight as
a regular habituee of the smart restaurants and dance-clubs, for it was
part of the great game which the heartless trio was playing for her to
be remarked and regarded as a woman of outstanding grace and beauty.

Men courted her society, and in more than one instance--if the truth be
whispered--had been hurried to the grave in consequence.

The quartette, after a delightful meal, took their coffee and Cointreau
at a little table set beneath a palm out in the hall.  Mrs. Morrison had
become as charmed with Mrs. Davidson as she had been with Ena Pollen.

"You must come up and see me at Carsphairn," she urged Lilla.  "No doubt
your husband, living in the country, shoots.  I can give him some grouse
in the season.  We have a fair amount of game on our moor at
Balmaclellan."

"I shall be delighted, Mrs. Morrison," was Davidson's reply; as he
lifted his eyes to Mrs. Pollen they exchanged significant glances.

Then, after a merry chat, Ena suddenly said:

"Can't all three of you dine with me at home one evening?  You are not
going North yet, are you, Mrs. Morrison?  Do come.  What about next
Saturday?"

"I'm going back to Brighton to-morrow," was her reply.

"But you can easily run up on Saturday.  Do. Let us dine early and go to
a show together, eh?" she suggested with her usual enthusiasm.  "You'll
come, Lilla, won't you?"

Mrs. Davidson hesitated.  She replied that she feared that she had an
engagement that evening, and her husband was certain that he had.

"Oh, now, do come!" urged the Red Widow. "If Mrs. Morrison will come,
you really must come."

Then, after a few half-hearted arguments and protests, Mrs. Morrison
accepted the invitation and the Davidsons did likewise.  And so the
quiet little dinner was fixed, Ena promising to get a box at some
theatre.

"Then we will go to Murray's or Giro's afterwards," she added.

Later, when Boyne and his wife were together in a taxi on their way to
Pont Street, Lilla turned to him, and said:

"It all seems to go well if you can be ready by Saturday.  If you can't,
then we shall be in the cart!"

"Leave it all to me," he said in a hard, changed voice.  "We shall be at
Upper Brook Street on Saturday, and I hope we shall be successful.  It
won't be my fault if we fail."




                             *CHAPTER XII*

                       *THE PERSON FROM UPSTAIRS*


Marigold Ramsay, still pretending her sudden and unaccountable illness,
lay upon a narrow iron bedstead in the spare room of Bernard Boyne's
house, listening, and unable to sleep.  She was there as a watch-dog.

Time after time she heard the bells of St. Paul's, Hammersmith, chiming
the hours, but there was no sound below.  Mr. Boyne had not returned.

The night was sultry and her window was slightly open.  As she lay
awake, she wondered what strange secret could be hidden in that house of
mystery.  Her aunt suspected nothing.  That was evident, or she would
have mentioned it to her.  To old Mrs. Felmore, Bernard Boyne was a good
and patient master, the persevering honest man which all Hammersmith
judged him to be.  None dreamed that he led such a curious double life
of dusty tramping by day, and enjoying himself in the gay haunts of the
West End by night.

It was nearly half-past two when a taxi set him down at the end of
Hammersmith Bridge, and he walked to that house covered with virginia
creeper. Not recollecting the fact that Marigold might still be there,
and knowing that old Mrs. Felmore would not hear him enter, he placed
his key in the latch and entered, closing the door heavily, as was his
wont.

Marigold, on the alert, heard him.  He went along the narrow, stuffy
passage into his sitting-room.  The girl sprang from her bed, put on the
dressing-gown her aunt had lent her, and opened the door noiselessly.
She heard the click of a lock in the room below, and knew that Boyne was
giving Nibby his food, as he did every night without fail.  Mrs. Felmore
always left him something, meat or biscuit, to give the tame rat each
night before he retired.

"Nibby" was Mr. Boyne's weird obsession; Mrs. Felmore hated it, but it
was in its cage living in the cupboard by day, and allowed to run about
the room at night, nibbling the evening newspaper or the old-fashioned
furniture, for it was as destructive as all its race.  One day Mrs.
Felmore found that it had gnawed the corner of the carpet, while on the
next she discovered that it had made a hole into the door of the
cupboard opposite that in which it lived.  And rat-holes are unsightly,
to say the least.

As Marigold listened she heard Mr. Boyne speaking to his pet.

"Now then, you've had enough, Nibby!  Get back, you elusive little
dear!"  And she heard him chasing him across the floor.

Then he unlocked another cupboard, and a few minutes later he came out
into the passage and ascended the stairs.  In consequence she closed her
own door noiselessly, slipped the bolt, and stood listening.  He passed
her door, and then ascended the next flight of stairs, therefore she
reopened her door instantly and, looking out, saw his form disappearing
round the corner of the next landing.

She held her breath.  He was dressed in that long hooded cloak of white,
just as she had seen him on that well-remembered night weeks ago.  He
was on his way to that locked room, and carried in his hand food for its
imprisoned occupant!

Dare she follow him?  She was there at Gerald's suggestion, and it was
for her to discover all she could.  As she listened she heard the key
being put into the Yale lock of that strong door at the top of the
stairs.  She heard him enter, the latch clicking behind him.

Then she heard strange cries--cries of surprise and rage--human cries!

Summoning courage she crept noiselessly after him, listening intently.
There were no sounds of voices--only those strange cries--though, having
ascended the second flight of stairs, she could see a streak of light
beneath the door, and could hear him moving about within.  Suddenly,
just as she was about to ascend the third flight, she heard him approach
the door and open it.  Instantly she drew back and flew down into her
room.  And none too quickly, for a second later they would have
encountered each other face to face.

Boyne, unsuspicious of being watched, for so occupied was he that he had
forgotten Marigold's presence in the house, returned to his
sitting-room, divested himself of the hideous disguise which he always
wore when visiting the locked room, and then reascended to bed.

The girl lay awake for hours until, wearied out, she fell asleep till
her aunt brought her some tea.

"Don't let Mr. Boyne know that I've stayed here to-night, auntie," she
said, getting up hurriedly. "I'll get away before he comes down.  I
don't want him to know I've been so ill."

The old woman read her lips and nodded, saying in a whisper:

"As soon as you're gone, dear, I'll make the bed."

"I don't want any breakfast.  I'll get to the City early, and have it
there."

And this she did.

When Boyne came down to breakfast he asked his housekeeper how her niece
was, to which she replied that she had recovered at about ten o'clock on
the previous night and gone home to Wimbledon.

Saturday was always an "off" day with Mr. Boyne. Working people did not
pay their weekly insurance premiums till Monday.  Saturday is the
half-day with the working class as Wednesday is with the shop-keeping
community.  Now on that particular Saturday Bernard Boyne, at eleven
o'clock in the forenoon, sent Mrs. Felmore to King Street to buy him a
tin of tomato soup.  He wrote down the brand on an old envelope.  And he
wanted nothing else.

"If one grocer has not got it, another has, no doubt.  If you can't get
it in Hammersmith go down to Chiswick or Bedford Park," he said.
"You'll find it somewhere."

And the old woman, whose shopping successes were always marvellous
considering her stone deafness, went forth, little dreaming that such a
brand as that he had written down was non-existent.

So all the morning until well into the afternoon Bernard Boyne had the
house entirely to himself.  As soon as she had gone, Boyne put on his
white disguise and, rushing upstairs to the locked room, opened it.

"Now then!" he shouted roughly.  "Are you ready?  Have you dressed yet?
No--you haven't. Now put it on--quick.  Come out and get some air. It's
stifling in this place!"

He waited at the door, whereupon a white figure, dressed exactly the
same as himself, emerged, and slowly and painfully came down the stairs.

The two weird figures, linked arm in arm, descended to Boyne's parlour,
whereupon in an authoritative tone he ordered the strange creature to be
seated.

"Sit there!" he said.  "And I'll open the window.  You want a bit of air
and exercise."

"Food!  Food!" came the words, weak and squeaky behind the hideous mask.

"Very well.  I'll go and get you some.  But you can't eat it yet.  Not
till you're back again in your own room.  Food!" he said roughly, with a
sneer.  "You're always wanting food and water. Fortunately the cistern
is up there, or I'd have to carry up every drop for you.  But your food
I never forget, do I, eh?" he shouted, as though the strange figure was
as deaf as old Mrs. Felmore.

The hooded figure, huddled in the arm-chair, only shrugged its
shoulders.

From the voice it was impossible to tell the sex of the individual.  The
tone was weak, squeaky, and quite unnatural.

"Now, tell me, what have you done?" asked Boyne.  "How is it
progressing?  I know you must be lonely sometimes, but it can't be
helped.  You are not fit to mix with us, you know.  And you exist upon
my charity.  I am always good to you! Understand that!"

"I--I know," squeaked the figure, whose white cloak was soiled and
stained, while those two long slits for the eyes under the pointed hood
gave it a most weird and forbidding appearance.

"I hope you appreciate all I've done for you," Boyne went on.  "If I had
not risked all this, where would you have been--tried and executed in
the hangman's noose.  But I have done my best--though often you don't
appreciate it."

"I--I do!" cried the voice from behind that strange disguise.  "And I do
all that you tell me," it whined.

"Very well," laughed Boyne.  "We'll let it rest at that.  The failure
you lately had put me right in the cart.  We mustn't have another.
Remember that!  Let it sink into your brain.  You are clever, I know.
But a single slip and both of us will go where we don't want to!"

"I know!  I know!  Yes--yes," replied the huddled figure.  "But it was
the weather--always the weather.  And it is so hot under that roof."

"Weather be hanged!" replied Boyne.  "This is winter--cold winter!--and
yet you believe it to be summer."

As a matter of fact, it was hot summer weather, yet Boyne was trying to
impress upon his companion that heat was cold, and vice versa.

The two weird figures in white cloaks, with only slits for the eyes,
like Brothers of the Misericordia of Mediaeval Italy, only in white,
instead of black, sat opposite each other.  Boyne was giving to his
prisoner a breath of air, and a change in his living room.

A few minutes later the strange occupant of the locked room uttered the
single word:

"Nibby?"

"Oh, yes, dear little Nibby is here," was Boyne's reply.

Rising, he fumbled beneath his cloak, and with his key unlocked the
cupboard and opened the cage, from which the tame rat darted down and
across the room.  A second later he was sniffing the cloak of the figure
from upstairs, running around the hem of the cloak with his little pink
nose, while the wearer of the cloak put down a hand to be smelt, saying:

"Nibby, my dear little Nibby, that I have lost so long!"

In all London no scene in broad daylight could have been more weird than
that at noon on a summer morning in Bridge Place, Hammersmith.

Boyne, the mystery man, held in such high esteem from Addison Road to
Kew, sat there with the poor crouching figure as his victim.  Behind
those long narrow slits in the white fabric showed a pair of dark,
deep-sunken eyes--eyes that were inhuman and unnatural.

The voice from behind the mask was metallic and squeaky.  Whether the
person was a man or a woman could not be conjectured.  The high-pitched
note was feminine.

"Am I not good to you to allow you this little relaxation?" asked Boyne.
"You don't often get it, I admit, for the old deaf crone is always
about, and I can seldom get rid of her."

"I--I felt--I felt very ill--last week.  Days ago!" croaked the
mysterious occupant of the locked room.

"I go up to you every day.  You never complained. You are usually asleep
when I come up."

"You come up at night.  But all day I look out from the window over the
roofs towards the river."

"River!  What do you mean?  There is no river here.  It is a desert--a
desert of bricks and mortar. You dream."

"Yes--yes.  I dream!  I--I'm always dreaming," was the response.

It was evident that Boyne held his half-imbecile prisoner completely in
his power, and that all the orders of the insurance agent were obeyed.

Into the room strayed a ray of summer sunlight across the threadbare
green carpet, lighting up the dingy old place.

The stranger from upstairs saw it, and squeaked:

"Look!  It's summer--summer!"

"Summer!" cried the man who held him enthralled.  "You're dreaming!
It's winter.  We get sun in winter sometimes.  Surely you know
that--dense as you are."

"I'm not dense," came the protest.  "I do all you ask--fine jobs, too."

"You're dense about sunshine," Boyne repeated.

"Ah! yes.  But not about the rats.  Where's Nibby?"

Boyne caught the little animal and gave it into the hands of the strange
figure, who stroked its sleek coat.

Suddenly the weird form in the soiled white disguise sprang to its feet
without warning, and, facing its jailer, shrieked:

"Ah!  But who are you?  Who are you?  I'm beginning to realise the truth
at last--_yes--at last_!"




                             *CHAPTER XIII*

                    *RELATES A STRANGE CONVERSATION*


"Who _are_ you?" shrieked the weird, hooded figure in the white cloak in
a fierce voice, standing up suddenly above the seated man who was in
exactly similar disguise.

The pair, one seated, and the other having suddenly sprung up, faced
each other.  The smaller, and apparently weaker figure had assumed a
distinctly offensive attitude.  His eyes shone behind the narrow slits.

"Fool!" laughed Boyne, who was seated.  "Sit down, you idiotic fool!"
And he waved his hand in contempt.  "If I had not looked after you, and
hidden you here, you would long ago have been given over to the hangman.
Just remember that!" he shouted loudly.  "Sink that into your skull,
sleepy brain!"

"But--but," faltered the figure.  "But who are you?  You are not
Wisden!"

Boyne, disguised in his white cloak with hood--the two presenting the
most weird spectacle in the light of day in that dingy room in
Hammersmith--started, then hesitated for a second.

"Yes," he replied, in a hard voice.  "I am Wisden!  Now you know!
Wisden, of Twywell! Do you recollect the name?"

"You--Wisden!" gasped the person whose countenance was disguised by that
hideous hood. "I--I----!"  And he sank back into his chair.

"Now you know, you accursed fool!" exclaimed the mystery man.  "And let
that also sink into your silly noddle.  Further, keep a still tongue.
Be silent when you are up there, for people may listen and hear you.  If
they do, then you'll be discovered, and your death will be quick.
Recollect that they are waiting for you--the affair isn't forgotten."

"No," sighed the weird figure.  "No--I know it hasn't been forgotten.
My crime!--_my crime_!"

"Yes.  But don't refer to it.  Just keep a level head, my dear Lionel,
as you always do.  I will still look after you if you remain silent and
do what I order.  I will supply you with everything.  But be very
careful that when I carry you up your food you don't speak.  Somebody
might overhear.  These cursed walls have ears, although the old woman
Felmore is deaf.  Do you understand me?" he asked in a more imperative
voice, rising, taking him by the shoulders, and shaking him.  "Now tell
me--you understand--eh?"

"Yes, yes!" the other gibbered in a strange tone.  "You--Wisden--Willie
Wisden!  Oh, yes! I--I see!  Dear old Willie, who was with me at Monte
Carlo.  Oh, yes!  _And that beautiful microscope_?"

"You've got it upstairs.  Don't you recollect it? Why, I gave it to you
in the Terminus Hotel, in Marseilles, three years ago.  Are you growing
foolish?  Surely not!"

"Yes.  Oh, yes!  I recollect now--the beautiful mike--oh, yes!  Oh, what
that instrument must have cost--oh, what a lot!--what a lot of money!"

"It did cost a good bit.  And it's yours.  So don't worry.  I'll look
after you, Lionel.  But don't play the fool, or you'll go to the gallows
over that unfortunate little affair--I warn you!  Scotland Yard is
looking everywhere for you, and they would have had you long ago if I
hadn't taken you in hand and had pity upon you."

For a few moments the strange figure huddled in the chair remained
silent.

"Yes--I know.  And--and Lilla?" he asked.

"She's dead--died a year ago," was Boyne's prompt reply.

"Lilla dead!" sighed the other.  "Poor Lilla! She was a very good wife
to you--just as Alice was to me!  Poor Lilla!"

"Don't you bother about my personal affairs, Lionel.  Just keep your own
end up, and breathe the bit of fresh air now while you can before you go
back to your own quarters.  I don't like you getting up through that
trap-door on to the roof. Somebody might see you one night."

"My quarters!  My prison, you mean!" he retorted bitterly.

"Prison?  Fool, what are you saying?  Your room is surely comfortable,
and I do my best for you.  If you want to get out--do so.  And you'll be
arrested by the first police constable who comes along."

"But it is prison!" replied the mysterious figure in a voice asking for
pity.  "Prison!"

"Well--take your liberty, and take the consequences," the other
responded roughly.

"Look what I do!  I'm always working for you--always!"

Boyne laughed harshly.

"Very well!  Give it up, and I'll fling you out into the
gutter--now--just as you are!  I shan't suffer," he added, "but you
will!  By gad you will!"

The man from upstairs cringed and drew his breath.

"No!  No!  Wisden!  No!--don't do that!  I'll do all you ask--all!
Alice--my dear Alice--always said you were my best friend--my very best
friend."

"And so I am, my dear fellow!" exclaimed Boyne.  "I've done my best for
you all along--all along."

"Look!" cried the lonely man who lived upstairs, and whose movements
were never heard by deaf old Mrs. Felmore.  "What's that?"

And with a shriek of horror he pointed to a corner of the dingy room.

"What?  I don't see anything!" was Boyne's reply.  "You've got one of
those spooky fits of yours coming on again.  You'd better go back."

"I don't want to go back," whined the person whose Christian name was
Lionel.  "Surely you won't send me back, Wisden?"

"Yes; for your own sake you must lie low.  Try to understand what I say.
We are mutually interested in each other.  It is to the advantage of
both that you should remain here.  I am not your jailer, recollect.  If
you wish, you can walk out now.  But I warn you that you will walk
straight into the hangman's noose.  Scotland Yard and the Old Bailey are
awaiting you, a

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